ISO 13485:2016
DEVICE DEVELOPMENT
User Interface Design
A good user interface (UI) is crucial for usability of any medical device UX Design. In fact, the user interface design process is an essential part of product design. In our modern time, even if your device has all the necessary features after extensive design research and testing, the UI that clients interact with is what will dictate their view of the device. This is why user experience design techniques are important – you must consider spanning time, devices, systems, mediums or even different users. A successful design must perform well in both the digital and physical dimensions, across all touch points. Consider that every piece of software must be used with at least one piece of hardware for input and output.
Human interface guidelines offer software developers recommendations on how they can improve the visual experience for users by making the user interface easier to navigate, learn, and use. This has many benefits for your users, including:
- They will allow users to familiarize themselves with the software more quickly, as it will contain common elements they are used to using.
- They will lead to you having to provide less support, as users will be able to navigate around the software much easier.
- They will make your device more flexible, as you will be able to create a consistent experience across different environments – this in turn will make it easier for users to use your product.
Heuristic evaluation will come up a lot in UX design – heuristic evaluation is used by UX designers to identify any usability issues within a device or product. To do this, usability testing experts will compare a product’s design to recognized usability principles – also known as heuristics. Once they encounter usability issues, they assign a severity rating to each one, enabling them to focus on each issue from most critical to least critical. Heuristic evaluation is important for delivering a high quality UX system to users, as it ultimately improves the usability of a product.
When designing a medical device, it is easy to overlook some aspects of the design process. Haptics are an example of one of the small but meaningful ways you can improve the usability of your product. Broadly speaking, haptic design focuses on the multisensory interaction between your product and the user by dictating the tactile response your product or device will provide. Haptics are largely used across our modern digital world, from phone vibrations to gaming applications. One of the main ways we interact with products is our hands – therefore, it makes sense to enrich your device with haptics that users will appreciate.
Picture this: you are a healthcare practitioner in a hospital setting, surrounded by dozens of medical devices. These medical devices have different alarms, all of which mean different things. How do you differentiate between which is an urgent alarm and which isn’t? This is what alarm fatigue sounds like, when healthcare employees become desensitized to alarms due to the sheer volume they hear on a daily basis in the hospital. This can cause longer response times or missed alerts, which can impact on patient safety. This is why audible design is so important when designing a medical device. Our experts have extensive experience and will be able to guide you through the ways in which you will incorporate auditory interfaces into your product, with patient safety at the forefront of our attention.
Another important component of user-centered design if your graphical user interface (GUI). GUIs help your clients use your device without needing to know exactly how it works. For example, the use of commonly used icons make it easy for users to understand how to achieve commands on your device, without the need for further research. Whilst it may seem simple, GUI is one of the design process steps that must be mastered if you wish to ensure your product reaches the market. If there is an issue within a medical device’s GUI user, the effect can seriously harm the user, the patient, or even both.
Luckily, Nectar has plenty of experience with GUI designs. As an ISO 13485:2016 certified company, we place safety and effectiveness at the forefront of our process. We ensure your device has an effective, safe GUI, so that your regulatory review goes smoothly, and your users and their patients are protected.
Many medical devices are composed of UIs that feed vital information back to the individuals using the devices. Whilst on the surface, these may all look different, they have one thing in common: they all have physical interfaces that are easy to use and interpret.
Nectar combine an expert team with over 30 years of experience to ensure physical interfaces are easy to use, accurate, and robust. We look at all aspects of user interface, including iconography, sounds, and colors. We know the FDA requires detailed user interface specifications for medical devices – and we deliver.
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