TL;DR

A MedTech company needed to move elderly clinicians from paper-based wound assessments to a digital tablet workflow without slowing them down. I led UX/visual/interaction design end-to-end. First usability round failed the target badly (avg. ~35 min vs. a 15-min goal); after redesigning the assessment workflow and controls around elderly-user constraints, the final round hit 17 of 22 clinicians at ~14 minutes, down from a 1.5 hour paper process. Shipped as an MVP.

Everyone assumed the goal was a faster form. It was actually about building trust with clinicians who feared technology would slow them down or make them look incompetent. Once that reframe happened, the workflow design followed.

Outcomes

Clinicians concerns: research observations

• Accuracy

They are concerned about getting the assessment and treatment done correctly.

• Goal oriented

They are okay with compromises on ‘design’ as long as their job is done.

• Non-linear workflow

The steps in assessement and treatment procedures vary based on case to case basis

• Time conscious

They want to save time and cover more patients in a day.

• Not tech savvy

Shortcomings of elder Clinicians working on digital interfaces needed extra care

Research insight

The clinicians were highly skilled, many especially those around 55 yrs and older feared that unfamiliar technology could disrupt their efficiency and undermine their expertise.

Wireframes used to initial understanding of Clinician-Patient encounter.

The MVP

Tab for non-linear workflow

Floating action button for linear workflow

Other design decisions

When designing for the elderly, every interaction had the potential to make or break the solution. This shaped the design decisions and the design system.

Checboxes with outline

Clinicians would read the options and return to the checkbox to select the option (right). I recommended checkboxes with outlines (left) for faster selection.

Large buttons

The buttons were made larger so that Clinicians can tap on the button during treatment procedure without difficulty.

Radio buttons with outline

Similar approach with outline was taken for radio buttons with the outlines. The shape was made rounder without any icon for easier and faster differentiation from a checkbox.

High contrast colours

The colour contrast had to pass AAA accessibility guidelines therefore the contrast between text, background and accent colour were carefully picked.

Similar colour interactive components

Consistent colour usage across interactive elements enhances recognition and supports faster recall for efficient task completion so button, checkboxes and radio buttons were made from same colour family.

Radio buttons with outline

Larger font size were picked for faster reading and type scaling factor a higher number.

Usability testing

Testing 1

Learnings:
• Mirroring physical behaviour digitally didn’t work
• Where a clinician is navigating to is unclear
• Flipping through pages wastes time

Testing 2

Learnings:
• Animating pages up and down led to disorientation
• Clinicians struggled to know which form they were at

Testing 3

Learnings:
• Visibility to access to other forms worked
• Interaction with interactive components 
could be faster

Testing 4

4th testing met the criteria of treatment documentation completion in under 15 mins.

Learnings:
• Navigating to different forms was quick
• This iteration enabled linear or arbitrary order for selecting a form

Wound indentification in a card

• 4x faster wound identification
• Sped up overall documentaion process
• Increased more focused treatment

You can read more about the design approach on a Medium blog post here.

Next steps (if I cont'd)