Human Factors Engineering

Sometimes the simplest designs are the most difficult to get right. Here's how we approach the design of a low-information-density user interface.

In many areas of healthcare where AI has great potential, use of the technology is still in its infancy. In these realms where it’s slower to catch on, a common obstacle to adoption is lack of trust.

A few months ago, we shared our thoughts on three UX trends reshaping medical product design. Here are a few suggestions on how to incorporate those trends into your medical device UX design efforts.

Why should you invest in a usable user interface?

Where do you fall on the Usability Maturity Ladder?

The acceleration of tech, and especially the mobile revolution, has deeply impacted both the consumer and medical device industries.

Users often go rogue, using products in ways they weren’t designed to be used. Design for misuse is a way to counteract this.

Often, users don’t know why they made a mistake. Human Factors researches use the art of Root Cause Probing to uncover what went wrong.

Affordance is the relationship between what something looks like and how it’s used. The user should be able to figure out how to use something just by looking at it.

Medical device manufacturers need to design for a new kind of user. This has big implications not just for the devices they design but also for how they do business.

Next-generation medical devices with hardware-software interactions need a new, holistic development methodology.

How does the new EU Medical Device Regulation relate to human factors and usability? It depends if your medical product is existing or new.

Medical devices are commonly recalled due to usability issues that can be prevented with human factors plans and uFMEAs.

There is no short map of an anticipated journey that medics can plan for while transporting a patient out of any building to the ER. Each scenario and response is unique.

A recent project with Make-A-Wish gave us the chance to make a meaningful connection with a family, which is a great benefit of product design.

In the immediate aftermath of any newsworthy accident, we often hear the words "human error" or "user error".

In medical product design, usability research was too often an afterthought. But you simply can’t expect something to look nice and assume patients and clinicians will know how to use it.

Launching a restaurant is the ultimate personal exercise in user-centered design.

Slowing down and practicing mindfulness in design can lead to better products.

Listening to, observing, and truly empathizing with healthcare professionals is necessary to deliver new solutions that are user-responsive and empowering.

Making the complex simple, or ‘simplexity,’ requires diligence in both iteration (build, test, learn) and designing the system and the details equally well.

The Lend a Handcycle project takes a leap forward with the selection of a scissor-jack design for seat adjustability.

Recent workplace deaths involving robotic arms are a new variant of the dangers that come with using powerful tools.

Progress is being made in our quest to design a fully adjustable hand cycle that can accommodate children with physical disabilities as they grow.

We noticed more discussion in general this year of user interface (UI) design, often in the context of smart devices. We anticipate UI becoming a stronger focus in upcoming HFES conferences as it continues to become clear that ineffective UIs represent the highest risk to safety and efficacy.

Experience design is a field prepared to help healthcare workers effectively use new diagnostic technologies, but it is a pretty wicked problem to tackle.

We recently changed the name of our user interface design team to Interaction Design. The latter encompasses the dynamics of a user’s interaction with a system — including the user’s perceptual, cognitive, and physical interaction with the system, as well as the system’s response to the user.