Designing for Dialogue: Persona-fying Healthcare Users
1
Designing for Dialogue: Persona-fying Healthcare Users Guiseppe Getto & Jessica Getto- Rivait [email protected] ; [email protected] Introduction Within the field of user experience design (UX), designing usable digital healthcare systems has become a primary interest of both designers and healthcare professionals. This is reflected in recent publications within trade journals in both UX and healthcare and the focus of last year’s World Usability Day (http://www.worldusabilityday.org/) on healthcare. From patient privacy to innovations in assistive technologies for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, designers and health communication professionals are presented with a variety of complex issues (http://boxesandarrows.com/makingthecasefora designledtransformation/). Drawing on latest methodologies in both UX and health communication, we present a technique known as persona development for use by any kind of professional who wants to make health communication more usable, compassionate, and effective. Methods & Results From our investigation of literature on best practices, we have found that two general paradigms guide the ways that users of digital healthcare systems are characterized. The dominant paradigm is competence. Most designers of healthcare systems are concerned with whether or not users can understand content and generally how to use the interfaces that house that content (as evidenced by the Ask Me 3 brochure, as well as measurement tools like the eHealth Literacy Scale). But as some designers argue, competence ought to be considered a surfacelevel issue (see Sandra Kerka’s “Health Literacy: Beyond Basic Skills ”). Instead of focusing on competence, these designers stress that designers should consider end users to be active and interested in dialoguing with healthcare professionals. We assert that competence should be a design goal, but that it is only one of several goals that designers and users of healthcare technologies should pursue. What should be pursued is a more humanistic method of designing for successful use and adoption of healthcare technology. A revision of demographics research, persona development is a technique used by designers to put a face to user data, as well as to deal with a variety of tensions among user segments (healthcare professionals, patients, legal teams, compliance officers, administrators, etc.). UX professionals develop personas, or archetypal users, via patterns in user data, from usability tests, user interviews, or even extant data (e.g. patient records, log files, etc.). Persona-fying healthcare users is thus an approach to designing communication systems for a variety of healthcare users that puts their health, wellbeing, goals, and needs first, while also paying heed to technological needs. References Jumat, A. (2014). Making the case for a design-led transformation: review of design for care. Boxes and arrows.http://boxesandarrows.com/making-the- case-for-a-design-led-transformation/ Kerka, S. (2004). Health literacy: beyond basic skills. Eric digest. http://www.ericdigests.org/2004- 1/health.htm National Patient Safety Foundation. (2014). Ask me 3. http://www.npsf.org/for-healthcare- professionals/programs/ask-me-3/ Norman, C.D. and Skinner, H.A. (2006). eHEALS: The ehealth literacy scale. Journal of medical internet research. 8.4. p. 27. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). Health information privacy. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html Conclusions UX is invaluable to healthcare organizations for a few important reasons. One, healthcare organizations often seek help with technology, but often settle for one-size-fits-all technology that their staff and consumers ultimately reject (Jumat para. 8). This choice can be quite costly for any healthcare organization. Further, UX professionals are not just interested in peddling a product, but are more interested in learning about the lives of members of an organization and their clients and using that knowledge to drive technology design. UX professionals understand that the unique needs of the organization are just as important to design as federal regulations (such as HIPPA and FDA healthcare software development guidelines) to which designers must adhere. Designers must always consider the competencies of end users, but in so doing must not neglect the people behind these competencies, and their complex needs and goals. Users have widely ranging levels of technological and technical literacies, as they come from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Both the the technological and the human must be considered when designing healthcare systems that meet the full spectrum of user needs. Discussion In our terms, then, users must be personafied through qualitative research that puts user needs at the forefront of the design of healthcare systems. This can be accomplished through a variety of models, including working with outside UX consultants; working with academic professionals trained in UX; inviting UX professionals to speak at healthcare conferences; and sending healthcare professionals to UX conferences and meetups. Once engaged in consultation with UX professionals, healthcare organizations can pursue persona development for design through a few concrete means. First, discussing organizational and federal requirements for the project is a must. This can clarify both possibilities and boundaries for the project through discussion of defined problems, laws, and identification of potential user groups. Then, healthcare organizations can arrange interviews (such as focus groups or individual interviews) with representative members of user groups. Based on results of these interviews, UX designers create personas from patterns in user data by choosing individual users whose needs are representative of the needs of others. From here, personas can be used to help design teams and the healthcare organization understand what features should be added to the technology they are creating and predict usefulness of those features prior to user testing. Although a significant time investment, this design process has been proven to result in better designs among healthcare organizations. Hypothetical HCP Persona THE HELPFUL HEALTHCARE PROVIDER “I want my patients to have instantaneous, secure access to all their health info” Key User Characteristics: •Wants to create effective protocols for teaching patients how do their rehabilitation exercises at home. •Wants to store these protocols in a secure, personalized, easy-to- -access mobile app •Wants to reuse pieces of protocols with different patients so she doesn’t have to invent each one from scratch Description/User Story…
-
Upload
guiseppe-getto -
Category
Design
-
view
356 -
download
0
description
This is a poster for the 2014 NC Health Informatics Career and Internship Fair/Business of Healthcare Symposium at East Carolina University. The poster explains how developing personas can help improve healthcare communication and the design of digital healthcare systems.
Transcript of Designing for Dialogue: Persona-fying Healthcare Users
Designing for Dialogue: Persona-fying Healthcare Users
Guiseppe Getto & Jessica [email protected]; [email protected]
IntroductionWithin the field of user experience design (UX), designing usable digital healthcare systems has become a primary interest of both designers and healthcare professionals. This is reflected in recent publications within trade journals in both UX and healthcare and the focus of last year’s World Usability Day (http://www.worldusabilityday.org/) on healthcare. From patient privacy to innovations in assistive technologies for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, designers and health communication professionals are presented with a variety of complex issues (http://boxesandarrows.com/making the case for a design led transformation/). Drawing on latest methodologies in both UX and health communication, we present a technique known as persona development for use by any kind of professional who wants to make health communication more usable, compassionate, and effective.
Methods & ResultsFrom our investigation of literature on best practices, we have found that two
general paradigms guide the ways that users of digital healthcare systems are characterized. The dominant paradigm is competence. Most designers of healthcare systems are concerned with whether or not users can understand content and generally how to use the interfaces that house that content (as evidenced by the Ask Me 3 brochure, as well as measurement tools like the eHealth Literacy Scale). But as some designers argue, competence ought to be considered a surface level issue (see Sandra Kerka’s “Health Literacy: Beyond Basic Skills”). Instead of focusing on competence, these designers stress that designers should consider end users to be active and interested in dialoguing with healthcare professionals. We assert that competence should be a design goal, but that it is only one of several goals that designers and users of healthcare technologies should pursue.
What should be pursued is a more humanistic method of designing for successful use and adoption of healthcare technology. A revision of demographics research, persona development is a technique used by designers to put a face to user data, as well as to deal with a variety of tensions among user segments (healthcare professionals, patients, legal teams, compliance officers, administrators, etc.). UX professionals develop personas, or archetypal users, via patterns in user data, from usability tests, user interviews, or even extant data (e.g. patient records, log files, etc.). Persona-fying healthcare users is thus an approach to designing communication systems for a variety of healthcare users that puts their health, well being, goals, and needs first, while also paying heed to technological needs.
ReferencesJumat, A. (2014). Making the case for a design-led transformation: review
of design for care. Boxes and arrows.http://boxesandarrows.com/making-the-case-for-a-design-led-transformation/
Kerka, S. (2004). Health literacy: beyond basic skills. Eric digest. http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-1/health.htm
National Patient Safety Foundation. (2014). Ask me 3. http://www.npsf.org/for-healthcare-professionals/programs/ask-me-3/
Norman, C.D. and Skinner, H.A. (2006). eHEALS: The ehealth literacy scale. Journal of medical internet research. 8.4. p. 27.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). Health information privacy. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html
ConclusionsUX is invaluable to healthcare organizations for a few important reasons. One, healthcare organizations often seek help with technology, but often settle for one-size-fits-all technology that their staff and consumers ultimately reject (Jumat para. 8). This choice can be quite costly for any healthcare organization. Further, UX professionals are not just interested in peddling a product, but are more interested in learning about the lives of members of an organization and their clients and using that knowledge to drive technology design. UX professionals understand that the unique needs of the organization are just as important to design as federal regulations (such as HIPPA and FDA healthcare software development guidelines) to which designers must adhere.
Designers must always consider the competencies of end users, but in so doing must not neglect the people behind these competencies, and their complex needs and goals. Users have widely ranging levels of technological and technical literacies, as they come from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Both the the technological and the human must be considered when designing healthcare systems that meet the full spectrum of user needs.
DiscussionIn our terms, then, users must be persona fied through qualitative research that puts user needs at the forefront of the design of healthcare systems. This can be accomplished through a variety of models, including working with outside UX consultants; working with academic professionals trained in UX; inviting UX professionals to speak at healthcare conferences; and sending healthcare professionals to UX conferences and meet ups.
Once engaged in consultation with UX professionals, healthcare organizations can pursue persona development for design through a few concrete means. First, discussing organizational and federal requirements for the project is a must. This can clarify both possibilities and boundaries for the project through discussion of defined problems, laws, and identification of potential user groups. Then, healthcare organizations can arrange interviews (such as focus groups or individual interviews) with representative members of user groups. Based on results of these interviews, UX designers create personas from patterns in user data by choosing individual users whose needs are representative of the needs of others. From here, personas can be used to help design teams and the healthcare organization understand what features should be added to the technology they are creating and predict usefulness of those features prior to user testing. Although a significant time investment, this design process has been proven to result in better designs among healthcare organizations.
Hypothetical HCP PersonaTHE HELPFUL HEALTHCARE PROVIDER
“I want my patients to have instantaneous, secure access to alltheir health info”
Key User Characteristics:•Wants to create effective protocols for teaching patients how do their rehabilitation exercises at home.•Wants to store these protocols in a secure, personalized, easy-to- -access mobile app•Wants to reuse pieces of protocols with different patients so she doesn’t have to invent each one from scratch
Description/User Story…
