Digitisation of ICUs in Wales
A quite recent project that I worked on heavily relied on usability engineering but is also a good example of end to end UX process.
The healthboards in Wales aim to digitise the ICUs, but the project failed user acceptence test after users rejected the system because of being too complex to use, this meant loosing £ 3.9 million. Unfortunately UX was not involved before this point but it was understood by the upper management that involving UX can not only save the project but turn the fate of the project completely.
Role : Senior user experience researcher, usability engineer, UI designer
Duration : 6 months
Post usability improvement impact
Result after Usability improvement is that the project now goes live in 2026
Methodology
Field user research to the finished product journey
I have completed several critical and high complexity projects over the years by doing the field user research using various research methods like shadowing and user interviews.
These insights are translated to tangible research artifacts like user journey, pain points list and converted into project and product requirements.
The final UI is created and reiterated multiple times with the users or user representatives untill the desired outcome is achieved. The usability engineering process is followed throughout if the product is medical classified.
New!Context of use
Findings and requirements analysis
Research formulation:
Workflow: I always start with understanding the workflow, the use context and use environment of the user. Understanding what tasks they start with at the begininning of their shift, when does the system in question starts being used and what other supporting systems are important in this context.
Tasks: I try to understand the comprehensive tasks list and the systems use in successful completion of the tasks
Bottlenecks: Going into th detail of above usually immediately expose the bottlenecks, the issues in the interface of the system,. the integration, the mismatch of the system with the context of use, the context switching of the users etc.
UI Design
Due to NDAs I cannot share the details of the solution but following is 1 example of the multiple interface issues that were fixed/improved based on heuristic evaluations, field research and user feedback.
Summative Usability Evaluation
The last step was to conduct the summative usability evaluation to get an evidence of the improvements raising the acceptance of the system.
Evaluation Participants
The study involved 10 participants including 4 physicians and 6 nurses.
Facilitation and Observation
Sessions were led by a usability engineer, a note taker, a clinical consultant for discussions on clinical data and the project manager.
Purpose of Evaluation
•Assess system usability through task-based scenarios to identify improvements and gather insights.
•To gather feedback about improvements in the configuration and the product
Usability Engineering
Documentation
The above project followed the UX plan shared above but also aligned and followed the usability engineering process for medical devices. Due to NDA, the details cant be shared but following is an outline of the process