Pathfinder Helps Tame Healthcare Complexity

Challenge:

A leader in medical software development and support recently enlisted Pathfinder’s services to help tame the complexity and ensure the usability of its newest product, an application for manufacturing blood products that will be positioned as the company’s next generation for component manufacturing, labeling, order entry and distribution.

The application’s two main user groups, the laboratory workers and the administrative supervisors, are diverse in requirements and goals:

• In the lab, technicians need a repeatable and robust process for manufacturing blood products, such as creating a pool or performing a conversion. Additionally, the software must work at times with the use of a hand scanner only (no keyboard or mouse).
• The administrative supervisors require a more flexible scheme to support investigative tasks. The application must provide very detailed query and reporting capabilities to track specific units or troubleshoot problems in the blood center.

Solution:

Pathfinder applied its proven user experience design process to create an intuitive and ergonomic product:

• At the core of our methodology is the identification of key user types, or personas. Each persona was researched in terms of goals, physical workspace, and application-use scenarios
• Ultimately, a detailed model of both lab and administrative user groups using personas and scenarios was created
• Detailed observations were conducted in the lab area where the software must work within the environmental constraints
• Visualizations were created of the lab environment and the work area of the lab technicians.
• Because different personas have different tasks to perform, the software needed to be designed to accommodate different user task flows. Miniature screens were created and embedded into flow charts to provide a simple walkthrough experience of an idea.
• After the particular flow was understood, sequences of wireframe screens were created to provide a representative experience of the major functions of the application.

As a result of the UXD process, several innovations are being integrated into the application:

• Because lab technicians typically perform a segment of their work while standing a few feet from their computers using hand scanners, the system was designed to provide easy-to-understand visual and audio feedback indicating whether or not a scanned unit is acceptable. Thus, the software becomes a part of the user’s total environment, and the experience of use is more robust and comfortable.
• The application also exhibits new ways of structuring screens so the analysis and administration functions are easier to perform. For example, content-intensive screens were designed to be easily scanned by the eye. Key information, such as test results, is presented using color indicators that enable the user to readily see and understand the information.
• Also included were templates for helping update detailed configuration parameters of the software.