by Jim Bradford, MediCHI Consulting
Bradford says: Some surprisingly simple changes can often make large improvements to medical device interfaces.
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Citation: “Making Medical Device Interfaces More User-Friendly,” by Michael E. Wiklund, Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry Magazine, 1988, pp 177–182.
People who should read this: (1) the engineers and computer programmers who design medical devices, and (2) administrators responsible for buying new medical devices.
The Context: Medical devices are often designed by people with little understanding of human factors and user interface design principles.
Review: At first I hesitated to review this article because it is two decades old. As I read it however, I realized that some advice is timeless.
Michael Wiklund has written extensively on medical human factors including three books on the topic:
- Handbook of Human Factors in Medical Device Design (available, 2009)
- Designing Usability Into Medical Products (2004)
- Medical Device and Equipment Design: Usability Engineering and Ergonomics (1995)
In this article Wiklund revisits many of the standard best practices in user interface design but adapts them to the specific context of medical device design. He provides advice on:
- Crowded display screens
- Navigation issues (i.e., how a user moves from screen to screen)
- Layout and hierarchies
- Aesthetics
- Typography and descriptive language
- Effective use of icons
- Consistency (one of the golden rules of interface design)
Even nontechnical readers (and perhaps nontechnical readers in particular!) will get a great deal of value from this article.
Human Factors has been an active discipline since the mid 1940′s [1]. During most of that time it has been an uphill battle to convince developers of the importance of human factors. After 65 years of experience many technical people still consider good interface design an optional, value-added feature. In my opinion we will only see developers taking human factors (and usability) seriously when customers become informed about the many benefits of a well-designed interface. Wiklund’s article serves as a model of the kind of writing human factors evangelists should be producing.
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[1] The History of Human Factors and Ergonomics, by David Meister, CRC, 1999, 400 pg.
The bottom line: Physicians and medical administrators need to know that some comparatively simple design practices can make all the difference between a good and bad medical user interface.
