In this article, I have shared some of my experience working in the healthcare domain and the role of user experience in the healthcare domain for crafting a better experience. It also covers the topic of conducting user research activities in the post-pandemic world.
You have an amazing experience of crafting design solutions for various domains, how the healthcare domain is different from all when it comes to user experience design?
I’m fortunate to have an opportunity to work in various domains from retail, banking, insurance, to travel throughout my career. I have been working as a Design Manager crafting experiences in the area of education in healthcare. It has been the most exciting and challenging experience while working for the medical and healthcare domain.
Designing for healthcare can be different from other domains as the design solutions provided could directly or indirectly impact the lives of the people around us.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) (6) has estimated that nearly 138 million patients witness harm caused by medical errors every year, in medium and low economic status countries (including India) (WHO, Medication Without Harm). A Harvard study by Prof Jha (7) says that 5.2 million medical errors are happening in India annually. Similarly, the British Medical Journal quoted that India like any other developing country is recording a lot of medical errors.
It becomes very important for the user experience practitioners to take up the initiative of understanding the healthcare domain, identify the critical problems through rigorous user experience research, and carefully craft the best solutions to match the end-users mental model.
What is the role of user experience in the healthcare domain for crafting a better experience?
A major shift that has been noted in the area of healthcare from a process-centric to a patient-centric approach. The user-centered design approach has been seen as the future of healthcare. Empathy will play a key role in closely relating to healthcare professionals and connecting with patients while designing the best experiences. There is a huge opportunity for designers to design an ecosystem of care. The designers have to take into consideration a few points while crafting the best experiences.
Design for clarity, efficiency, and effectiveness Beyond any respective domains, a designer should always take into consideration the various facets of the user experience like useful, usable, desirable, valuable, findable, accessible, and credible. When it comes to designing for healthcare there are few of these facets that could weigh more than others.
Bansi Mehta (1) has wonderfully explained that a UX designer must keep that in mind, especially in healthcare, the design needs to work like a scalpel and not like a Swiss knife, i.e. the design needs to be simple and intuitive and not distracting. The UX designer must resist the urge to over-design. The design should not overburden the healthcare professionals with the cognitive load which may cause someone to commit grave mistakes.
The applications at its core should adhere to a few factors like being usable, findable, and accessible while other facets could support based on the context of use within healthcare. The situation in which healthcare professionals work could be quite intense and stressful and they need the technology to assist them in their work. The designs should be simple, easy to use, assist efficient decision making, and effectively fulfil the most critical goals of the users.
Published:
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Published in Medium at Design Impacts.
This is an article that has been published as a part of at First Edition — UXness magazine on 25 July 2020. You can download the magazine here at Edition 1, ‘Usability Testing’ — https://lnkd.in/eMJpz7D
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