Your aspiration for a simple, user-friendly digital experience for your medical device is admirable. However, without thoughtful design work, seemingly minor interface decisions can jeopardize clinical utility, adoption, and patient safety. Below, we explore the intricacies of UX and UI for medical devices, and why they matter more than you might think.
When innovators envision a digital interface for a physical medical device, they might picture something simple: a 10-inch touchscreen that clinicians can navigate effortlessly on the hospital floor. The reality? That interface might require 50+ workflows specific to clinician type and 1,370+ component variants in Figma that display clinical data at the right moment, considering all moments of use that compound exponentially. Healthcare professionals expect the intuitiveness and accessibility of consumer-led experiences, but clinical complexity demands far more rigor.
Whether designing emergency room diagnostic interfaces, surgical navigation systems, or laboratory equipment controls, ShweThee Kale, our Manager of UX and UI in the Human Centered Design practice, shares the following strategic and tactical guide to effectively implement digital experiences for medical devices.
Medical device UX and UI is complicated and reliant on visual communication to alert clinicians of status related to devices, patients and sometimes predicting outcomes. Success is achieved through balancing elements of the desirability, viability and feasibility framework:
Even simple interfaces demand this balance. We designed a three-function laparoscopic camera cleaning device that used LEDs to communicate when the device was warming up and a user needed to wait, vs when the device was ready to use. The LED blinked when warming up and became static when ready to use. This light behavior of blinking and static states matches mental models we encounter in consumer products when pairing Bluetooth devices. When this is done poorly or does not match the mental expectation, it represents one of the most common annoyances we uncover during heuristics. The challenge further mounts amid the complex environmental conditions of hospitals and operating rooms where sterility is paramount, lighting conditions vary widely, and error recovery must be swift.
Problem: You need to know when to sprint for buy-in and excitement versus when you need a measured pace for the marathon.
Solution: We’ve learned over the years that clients’ business goals help determine whether their development cycle affords sprints or whether digging deep to collaborate cross-functionally is more valuable to progress.
For investor demos, rapid iteration of concept ideas and prototypes generates excitement to raise funding. Leverage these prototypes immediately as visual stimuli to test resonance with actual users. This dual approach affirms concept direction to further progress designing details, all while building confidence with stakeholders.
For detailing design solutions on a clinical or commercial pathway, depth in understanding multiple facets is needed. Understanding the current standard of care and how proposed solutions align or deviate from it, technical feasibility limitations, risk of patient harm or function failures to name a few, require dedicated project teams weaving through these nuanced topics to verify and validate assumptions. Sprints during detailed engineering phases must be tactical, specific, and nimble to address challenges that arise.
Problem: Unwillingness to evolve assumptions and bias through product development
Solution: Iterate concepts, test often, adapt assumptions and question bias by gleaning insights from user feedback in their intended use environments.
In a recent formative study, we observed clinicians prioritizing certain metrics over others in the digital interface. Understanding how they were reading the clinical data extracted from the device, informs the workflows and actions that nudge users forward. This early testing is foundational to tailor assumptions.
As the design evolves it’s important to glean additional insights of user behaviors by simulating the holistic workflows in the intended use environment. These factors multiply complexity and provide rationale for design decisions:
Problem: Underestimating the amount of clinical content a digital interface needs. We witness project teams do this regularly.
Solution: Be prepared to discuss comprehensive content packages from high- level navigation through miniscule details of how time is displayed in HH:MM:SS. The amount of clinical content required to build confidence with end users differs greatly between clinicians, the patients they provide care to, service personnel, and client companies wanting aggregated data to inform their evolving business strategy. If layers like menu pages, tabbed sections, submenus or cards are valuable to end users, all of these areas need content.
Almost any login page for any application has 6 elements: company logo & name, username, password, forgot password, create a new account, action to login. If this is just page 1, imagine a dashboard that displays patient health metrics, their reported outcomes displayed in graphs + numerical values and units.
For example, we designed a clinician decision support tool that calculated a patient’s risk of sepsis. What seemed like a straightforward ask in hindsight meant, we needed to better understand the different blood tests a clinician might order to identify whether a patient is at risk of sepsis. This in turn meant we had to visually communicate rationale by saving room for each blood test (chem-7, CBC, vitals, etc.) that could be run as frequently as every 30 mins.
This seemingly straightforward ask of “save room for these values” became multiple complex discussions of where & how is this data pulled, what animations can we use to get clinician attention and how complex is it to display values in a table vs a custom graph?
It becomes increasingly important to simulate workflow and use steps with representative data during usability evaluations like formative and HF validation studies. Humans are great at picking up contrasting patterns and a wrong number of a heart rate for instance can detract precious time away from researchers conducting interviews with participants who only have 60 minutes to provide feedback to our design concepts.
All these decisions compound through your product development, impacting FDA submissions and ongoing support once the product is launched.
Problem: Software teams join after designs are established with a lot of assumptions
Solution: Consult technical expertise throughout the concept definition process
When software teams join late, you've already made assumptions about technical feasibility. Can the software detect error states from device sensors? How will real-time data flow? What happens during network failures?
Consider a surgical console we designed for tissue ablation, integrating computers, laser modules, monitors, and disposables. The digital interface needed imaging & fluoroscopy for navigation, laser parameters, and procedure reports saved to a patient record in the EHR. Without early software involvement to strategize its feasibility, this complexity surfaces too late.
Involve software teams when you are preparing a concept direction to bring into user testing. They need to understand what users are trying to accomplish, not just interface mechanics. Depending on product complexity, as concept definition progresses, UX/UI teams specify design intent of 3-20+ screens which include 5-80+ workflows and exponentially means 60-500+ component variants specified in a UI design document for software teams to implement. Collaboration across design and engineering teams helps reduce re-work in the long run.
Designing a novel product and preparing a pathway for FDA submission vs speed to market of an established technology has conflicting goals. A flat screen display serving as the digital interface for your medical device may seem a simple proposition. However, its embedded interactions and guided workflows are highly complex. Early software engagement, iterative user testing, and balancing technology with business and clinical needs determine success.
The Veranex Design and Engineering teams bring decades of experience navigating the unique challenges of medical device UX/UI. We transform complex clinical workflows into intuitive digital experiences that seamlessly integrate with physical medical devices integrated within the industry’s first, full lifecycle Innovation CRO.
Ready to discuss your medical device's digital experience? Together we can establish a strategy that meets your needs. Let's explore how our integrated approach can accelerate your path to market.
ShweThee Kale is Manager of UX/UI Design for Veranex leading a team that works across the design continuum to ensure the UX intent is maintained on a variety of client programs ranging from early phase design to late phase development. Her cross-disciplinary collaborative nature with teams comprised of Research & Strategy, Human Factors, Industrial Design, Software Development, and more ensures we design empathetic, meaningful, and impactful solutions.
ShweThee's passion for user experience also includes labeling design and development activities such as creating Instructions for Use (IFUs), on-device labeling and packaging that focuses on communicating safety, usability, and risk mitigation at varying levels of rigor for usability evaluations. ShweThee holds a degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design.