Lisa J Douglas

Research project background. Our team was tasked to design a high risk case management system to be used by RN Case Managers to manage patient care. During the discovery phase of the project, nurses told our team it was difficult to really get a good understanding of a patient because the patient info and health documentation was spread across 7 different applications and this information was not shared across systems.  One nurse said it's like trying to understand what someone looks like by seeing only portions of their face in many different photos that cannot be combined.

Our research and design team took an integrative, anticipatory design approach to create an interface that allowed us to display multiple types of complex data in a single system with a one-page display*. Users could manipulate data available at any time and perform CRUD (create/read/update/delete) with most of the data available in the new design.

Research goals. To test several potential designs and uncover any usability issues as well as gather general feedback using 5 realistic user task scenarios with a prototype of the new system in order to move the right design into a final phase before development. Scenarios were developed in conjunction with real users to ensure the workflows didn't distract from the test goals.   

Methodology. We used a prepared test script for the scenarios to have as much control as possible and tested in person with 6 participants in one-on-one sessions. After the testing phase participants subjectively rated the system (like/dislike), completed the Microsoft Adjectives task, and completed a System Usability Scale questionnaire. We like using convergent measures because the metrics help stakeholders have an easy-to-understand way to understand the design progress.   

Results. Users uncovered additional usability issues in most of our scenarios. However, even with the issues reported, the success of the new designs was revealed with high ratings (8.6) and a high SUS score (88 out of 100) as well as only positive adjectives in the Microsoft Adjectives task. In fact, 4 of the 6 participants chose the word "fresh" from a list of 118 adjectives. 

*I cannot show the designs here due to confidentiality.

Thumbnail photo: medium.theuxblog.com