As more healthcare products transition to digital models, especially those with life-changing implications like medical devices, UX design is becoming increasingly critical. This creates new priorities for healthcare product design. Creating a high-quality digital user experience (UX) should be top of mind throughout the medical space.
Designers responsible for healthcare UX creation and refinement have a challenging task ahead of them. All the standard rules of high-quality UX design still apply, alongside added concerns like the need for regulatory compliance and the importance of the finished products for users' health and well-being.
By becoming more aware of best practices and industry trends within the healthcare product design space, it's possible to see opportunities for true excellence in digital solution delivery and experiences.
While the general facts of UX design in healthcare are the same as in other sectors — companies must design positive experiences so customers will be happy continuing to use those brands' products — the stakes are higher. Flaws in healthcare UX can lead to negative medical consequences, demanding a new level of focus from all teams and individuals involved.
No one likes struggling with an overcomplicated, unresponsive, or otherwise unsuitable UX. This makes UX design a universal priority for today's businesses. Applying this thinking to healthcare simply means taking a product-centric approach to design.
Historically, designers in healthcare haven't thought about their products as if they were consumer goods. A general lack of competition in the space, coupled with users' need for the products, led to a deemphasis on UX design.
This has changed somewhat in recent years. The urgency of battling the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased digitization caused by lockdowns has energized healthcare development and spurred innovation in the field. Facing demand for digital health devices and regulations that allow more online interactions, designers have begun work on a new generation of products.
Understanding healthcare UX design today means embracing the latest wave of technological advancements. Equipped with new technological capabilities, designers are now prioritizing superior patient experiences.
The key practice for UX designers is to assess which current technology trends and priorities are a good match for their work on health products and apply those innovations in ways that put the patient's needs front and center. Human-centered design in healthcare is closely aligned with the industry-agnostic concept of user-centric design.
Especially promising tech trends to focus on include:
Advancements in digital healthcare UX design are driven by need. Telehealth expands the geographic reach of health systems. Accessibility features help care providers reach new audiences effectively, including aging patients who may struggle with more standard device interfaces.
Designing a great UX in healthcare means focusing on useful objectives. Each piece of the design should serve a specific need, whether that means reaching a wider patient population, decreasing the cost of care, facilitating rapport between patients and care providers, or any other high-priority goal.
Helpful practices for digital health product design include:
In their demand for streamlined experiences that work smoothly — and the serious potential consequences that come from design mistakes — healthcare devices provide some of the purest use cases for digital UX design. All the principles that go into creating pleasing, user-centric solutions apply, and the most skilled designers have a chance to help care providers and patients alike.
Regulatory compliance adds another challenge to the overall process of UX design in healthcare. While crafting experiences that suit users' needs and meet their expectations, designers must always keep compliance in mind.
The primary consideration in terms of regulatory compliance in healthtech design comes from privacy and data protection. Data security is especially pressing when the information in question includes privileged patient details covered by national-level legislation like the Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA). Designers may consider the feature sets of their products more carefully compared to more general-purpose solutions to reduce the risk of compromising data priority.
Consider the importance of compliance in all elements of the product - for example Microsoft Teams has high-level security features to get in line with HIPAA. The Teams suite enables easy communication between medical professionals while ensuring their data transfers remain secure and compliant.
Going above and beyond compliance requirements and obeying the regulations for every jurisdiction where a product is used are important priorities for designers in healthcare. Balancing these needs with the pressure to make products accessible and usable for their target audiences is one of the primary considerations for UX designers in the healthcare space.
The UX challenges facing designers in healthcare require a focused approach, but teams that overcome these barriers and succeed can deliver life-changing products for care providers and patients alike. Working with experienced digital product designers is a way to both streamline work on a new product and increase its finished quality.
Transcenda's experts can deliver the required level of knowledge and support to your company's next healthcare design project. Whether on a consulting level or through hands-on, side-by-side support, our experienced designers and developers can apply best practices to ensure your product achieves its objectives.
The need for high-quality UX in healthcare is only increasing as more patients become comfortable dealing with their care needs via digital products and solutions. The companies that rise to the top of the industry will be those that can master the design process, and partnering with Transcenda can help you join this group. Recently we supported Medidata, a Dassault Systèmes company, in achieving a human-centered and unified experience for its clinical development platform.
Contact us to learn more about how what we can do for you.
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