Design, User Experience, and Usability. User Experience in Novel Technological Environments

Abstract

The wide array of devices used in critical care areas of hospitals creates difficulties in keeping order. Disorganized equipment in these areas can lead to numerous issues including lower task efficiency for health care workers, potential safety hazards and infection control issues. An equipment mounting rail and adapter system is one of the best tools available to help manage and organize critical equipment. Current rail systems perform well in many respects yet but there are still a number of areas that may be improved. Improved interfaces for attaching and positioning equipment are needed to enhance safety and improve ease of use. As equipment rail systems are widely used backward compatibility is important to allow health care facilities to deploy enhanced equipment management systems while still leveraging their investment in current hardware. This will aid effectively and efficiently managing the deployment of new technologies in these settings. This paper discusses the process undertaken to design and test a new mounting rail for medical equipment aimed at improving the device organization and workflow in critical care areas. The project was sponsored by an equipment management manufacturer, so initial requirements were gathered through meetings with product experts as well as the sales and marketing director. This step helped to ensure that current market conditions and realistic business objectives were considered. Further requirements were gathered through on site observations and interviews. This included observations at the cardiac intensive care unit at Egleston Children's Healthcare of Atlanta in order to gather data on the using environment, to observe users in their natural work environment, and then to follow up the observations with one-on-one interviews to bring further clarity to observed issues. A participatory design process was utilized to engage stakeholders at various stages of the design process in order to identify potential design issues and continually evaluate the usability of the evolving concept. These were followed by end user usability testing and analysis. The new rail system under development was show improvements in control, secure and flexibility, which will take more care on user experience. The usability evaluation was measured by effectiveness and satisfaction of the design, namely their impact on task efficiency, the impact on infection control and ergonomics of use. The final result showed the design almost meet the requirement, though some features need to be further improved. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.