Innovative vs. Intuitive: 5 Ways To Ensure Novelty Doesn't Compromise Usability
By Abbe Kopra and Craig Scherer, Insight Product Development
With today’s hyper-focus on speed to market in medical device development, we've seen clients get quite frustrated when a new-to-the-world design doesn't instantly prove "intuitive" to users. Innovation can often upset the apple cart, especially in cases where new and unfamiliar technologies are utilized to enable new functionality. Importantly, this less-than-optimal user experience can hurt the product’s adoption and lead to high rates of abandonment.
These disruptions to users’ expectations may necessitate designs that help them understand the need to complete a task in a new way. In the case of new technologies, this can be a sign that we've identified a potentially disruptive innovation to better serve user needs in the long run.
As medical device developers trying to stand out from our competition and better support our users, how can we be sure a product isn’t just different for the sake of being different? And, if we think we have a winner, how can we introduce it in a way that best supports our target audience, setting them up for optimal usability and success?
Here are five suggestions for making sure that our new designs create safe, effective, and desirable outcomes:
1. Consider how much of the idea is really new. Unfamiliar can still be designed to be intuitive. Many successful products apply familiar building blocks to a new application, and these can prove to be quite intuitive because of the mental models that already exist. All we need to do is to develop a system or interaction that performs in a familiar way; a way that supports users’ tasks, goals, and expectations.
Auto-injector devices often rely on the mental model of a pen, but can effectively leverage other models. Two students from the University of Minnesota have developed their AdrenaCard auto-injector in the shape of a credit card, instead of a pen. While this credit card-shaped device allows the injector to be carried more discretely, it is also used in a substantially similar fashion as a pen injector: The user removes a locking tab and presses the device into the leg in the same way. So, while the form factor is different for reasons of portability and discreteness, the user interaction follows a familiar model already learned by this user group.
2. Integrate with the familiar. It's not just the breakthrough technology that guarantees a successful product; it's often the positive user experience that integrates with people's lifestyles. Apple was not the first to come out with an mp3 player. But, they made it effortless for users to transfer their existing CDs to the format, and they also made sure the iPod worked just as well with Windows as with Macs. Before they knew it, users couldn't imagine their life without the iPod.
Fast forward 15 years from the launch of the iPod and we see more and more medical devices utilizing the IOS and Android mobile platforms every day. These devices are so ubiquitous that it is easy to understand their proliferation into the medical world. The real value behind this phenomenon, however, is not necessarily in its physical embodiment, but often in its fairly invisible technology.
Many medical applications tap into these devices for their high-quality image capture capabilities. Smart Vision Labs uses a smartphone for its autorefractor product, based on smartphones’ on-board, high-resolution imaging system. While the company’s algorithms provide the real value for this application, they relied on user familiarity with smartphone interaction to create the best user experience.
Similarly, St. Jude Medical has created an iPhone/iPad-based interface for its new patient-controlled pain management system. As with the Smart Vision device, user familiarity with the smartphone’s interface could be the unifying aspect that drives this product’s adoption and success. Users are extremely comfortable using iPhones and Android devices for their interactions, but it is the devices’ transparent technologies and connected access that make them viable in the medical arena.
3. Assess the resources available for re-training users. New solutions often require coaching to ensure comprehension and adoption. It may not be worth launching a highly innovative idea until you also can provide customized user support at launch.
How much are you willing and able to invest in education around your product? What will be the most effective channels to distribute the information? How much support and reiteration of the instructions will be required to ensure proper use? Strategizing around these questions will help ensure that the value of new and innovative product features become embraced, not dreaded.
Hill-Rom leverages a large screen on its Envision device controller, enabling instructional videos to be played and referenced, thus reducing the amount of support and in-service needed when the company rolls out new feature sets. Similarly, most drug device makers are developing more user-centered training materials for their delivery systems — including illustration-based, easy-to-understand quick start guides — understanding that patients are unlikely to dive into typical instructions for use (IFU) for any practical information.
4. Integrate a sound human factors plan. With innovation comes potential use risk, and no group is required to work harder to manage this risk than medical device manufacturers. It is critical to incorporate human factors (HF) planning and evaluation into each stage of product development. HF experts can identify and help mitigate use risks, as well as discern the most effective ways to educate users around new features and functionality.
Too often, these human factors activities are abbreviated or omitted altogether, leading to costly restarts and retrofits of a sound human factors effort. By feeding these inputs into product design from an early stage, we can navigate around the usability risks that could prevent successful product adoption and use.
Human factors engineers are no longer optional on our development teams. The creation, execution, and documentation of this process can be the lynchpin to creating products that are not only safe and clinically effective, but that also supports users’ goals leading to greater adoption and product success.
5. Test assumptions and update user requirements. When all is said and done, having performed effective user research gives us the confidence to move forward with our decisions and stand by our recommendations. Checking in with users at regular intervals is the best way to assess both value and usability. User requirements need to be documented and prioritized, and researching how our proposed new products and features are accepted or rejected will help properly organize and characterize those needs.
The pinnacle of success in today’s medical device industry continues to rely on disruptive technologies and game-changing innovation. To ensure that target users are supported by these new products and features, remember to continually engage with those users. Make every effort to understand how they think, behave, and feel. Find ways to support their workflows, expectations, and belief systems, and you will surely create solutions that are adopted, embraced, and drive success for your product and platform.
About The Authors
Abbe Kopra is a senior researcher at Insight Product Development. Drawing from her experience in anthropology and psychology, Abbe leads teams at Insight by conducting research on health and human behavior to drive actionable design inputs for medical devices and systems. She draws from a variety of methodologies to study behavior in context and uncover meaningful patterns in everyday habits. Abbe holds M.A.s in Social Sciences and Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago, and B.A.s in Anthropology and Psychology from Boston University.
Craig Scherer is senior partner and co-founder of Insight Product Development. Craig plays an active role in key account management, working with companies ranging from early stage tech organizations to the largest healthcare OEMs. He is also a director of Insight Accelerator Labs, Insight's in-house med device accelerator, helping medtech start-ups deliver transformative technologies to healthcare. Craig holds a BFA in industrial design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.