Bringing usability back into Medical Apps
Product design
Overview
In 2019, I embarked on a transformative journey with the world's leading provider of dialysis products and services to create a comprehensive solution for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. The two-fold project included the development of a Tracking App for dialysis patients and a desktop application catering to the needs of nephrology doctors.
Challenge
Simplify the routine of patients, doctors and nurses in the nephrology unit by creating an easy to use, integrated system.
Outcome
The pilot launch promised a revolutionary approach to medical apps usability. I worked for 2 years on the project but left the company before the app launch scheduled for the end of 2022.
Agency
Design Group Italia
Year
2020-2021
Field
UX Research • Product Design
Role
Lead Producr Designer
Main Challenges
Global Digital Design System
We started collaborating with the team in charge of the Global Digital Design System that oversees every single digital product ever released from our client. Because of the lack of design rules, it was very hard for different teams to communicate with each other. Since the products we are working on are very complex, it is always hard to keep consistency. There were many UI elements across the systems and I had to overview the whole process and find a way to give more consistency to the overall look and feel.
Despite having a team in charge of the Global Digital Design System, the client lacked a clear set of design rules valid for every digital product they released. My first task was to assist them in creating coherent UI elements across the systems and to overview the whole process and find a way to give more consistency to the overall look and feel.
Remote research
One of our goals was to improve the job performance in clinics, but we could barely see one in our research process: Covid 19, privacy for Medical data, a lot of paperwork to go through and very busy users were only a few of the complications we had to face.
Having to do research in hospitals and clinic around the Milan area (that was the first hit by Covid in Italy in early 2020) my team had to come up with a solution to gather the information and manage the research remotely with tools such as Whereby and Lookback that gave us the opportunity to talk with dozens of patients, doctors, nurses, product specialists, head of hospital department, and caregivers from all around the world.
PD Health Tracking
Patient's app
The project aimed to design a Tracking App for end stage renal disease patients to make their daily life simpler by helping them keep track of all treatment related data and progress.
Timeline
September 2020 - September 2021
Role
Senior Product Designer
Empathize & Define
My team used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand users & their context, business needs and the ecosystem.
After studying all the existent literature, I started the first round of interviews with patients, doctors and nurses in nephrology clinics around the Milan area. The main focus was to understand what the patient journey was, from the diagnosis to the transplant, through all the process of Peritoneal Dialysis therapy.
My team translated research learnings into concepts and prototypes, defined main features, built flows and collected and shared all the information with the client.
Empathize & Define
My team used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand users & their context, business needs and the ecosystem.
After studying all the existent literature, I started the first round of interviews with patients, doctors and nurses in nephrology clinics around the Milan area. The main focus was to understand what the patient journey was, from the diagnosis to the transplant, through all the process of Peritoneal Dialysis therapy.
My team translated research learnings into concepts and prototypes, defined main features, built flows and collected and shared all the information with the client.
Test & Deliver
We tested our products at different stages of the process with both end users and client’s product specialists who had seen the systems evolve over the past 20 years.
Recruiting was the biggest challenge for the research and the testing phase of this project. Finding available doctors and nurses was particularly challenging mostly because of Covid.
One4All
Doctor's app
My team was entrusted with the task of designing a simple-to-use and efficient information system to support physicians who engage in complex high-risk tasks.
Timeline
February 2021 - September 2021
Role
Lead Product Designer
Empathize
The goal was to create a Practice management system to run everything in a clinic: store patient and therapy data, support clinical decision-making, manage inventory, billing, overview performance indicators.
The client offered multiple apps each managing different steps of the process for different dialysis modalities (Peritoneal Dialysis, Hemodialysis).
Empathize
The goal was to create a Practice management system to run everything in a clinic: store patient and therapy data, support clinical decision-making, manage inventory, billing, overview performance indicators.
The client offered multiple apps each managing different steps of the process for different dialysis modalities (Peritoneal Dialysis, Hemodialysis).
Usability and medical software didn’t get along with each other. My team analyzed many of the apps available in the clinical environment and we were overwhelmed by the massive amount of informations and possible actions that were everywhere.
Our research started by gathering all the inputs we had from doctors during the Patient’s App project; we then integrated those inputs with document analysis, remote systems walkthrough and more interviews with product specialists, doctors and nurses trying to understand the main tasks they had to perform in their daily working life.
Define
The main challenge of this project was finding a way to successfully organize thousands of data, prioritize them for users with different needs and goals and making it look like a very simple thing. That’s why the first approach was to define the overall information architecture and the detailed flow of information for all the main features.
After several low-fidelity explorations, my team started developing mid-fidelity screens for each page, up to a first prototype designed in Figma. Most of our initial effort when we started working on the UI was to figure out an effective navigation system.
Define
The main challenge of this project was finding a way to successfully organize thousands of data, prioritize them for users with different needs and goals and making it look like a very simple thing. That’s why the first approach was to define the overall information architecture and the detailed flow of information for all the main features.
After several low-fidelity explorations, my team started developing mid-fidelity screens for each page, up to a first prototype designed in Figma. Most of our initial effort when we started working on the UI was to figure out an effective navigation system.
Conclusion
When I left the company the project was ongoing, with continuous iterations, interviews, and agile development in collaboration with developers. The anticipated pilot launch was scheduled for the end of 2022, promising a revolutionary approach to medical software usability.