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UX Design: Focus on the user
UX Design: Focus on the user
Our products and solutions are at the center of clinical decision-making. To tailor our innovations to situations where people are most vulnerable, holistic, human-centered design is key. Making medical technology human – that is the central task of the UX team.
User experience refers to a person's feelings and attitudes when using a system or service. Good design is understandable and responsive, guiding users to their goals. Design builds trust. Design reflects quality and value and has the power to convey and externalize an organization’s brand identity. In healthcare, design issues revolve entirely around patients and healthcare professionals – nothing less than people in a personally sensitive situation and the people whose job it is to help. In this situation, design understandably has an added impact.
A design language to build extraordinary experiences
People are at the center of everything we do, whether it's hardware, software, or artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in our portfolio. Our goal is to transform healthcare and improve the lives of people around the world.
Shui, the design system of Siemens Healthineers, with principles, guidelines, and ready-to-use assets, enables us to create coherent and delightful experiences. The holistic design approach is defining all elements for software and hardware, as well as tone of voice, sounds and different ways of interacting with a system.
Shui helps customers to increase workforce productivity because the entire fleet is consistent, easy, and efficient to operate, reducing learning times and increasing flexibility when it comes to staff assignment.
How UX gives product design a new spin
The design of medical technology can make a significant impact on clinical performance and workflows. Medical units such as radiology face rising workloads and staff shortages yet must still maintain diagnostic accuracy: UX design can help unlock valuable opportunities.
When our X-Ray Products business began working on a new imaging system, the development team had a strong focus on UX right from the start. Throughout the design process for the new product YSIO X.pree, dedicated designers and user research teams ensured the integration of user viewpoints.
This meant following the User-Centered Design Process (UCD) and regularly integrating user feedback. And so, the project resulted in more than just a standard update of the industrial design: the usability of the system-specific Touch User Interface (TUI) on the tube head was significantly improved according to medical staff’s needs, complementing the Industrial Design with Shui Interface Design elements.
How UX takes on software design challenges even during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic gave digitalization a boost in many ways. To support all parties involved with diagnosis, care delivery, efficient planning, distribution, administering and documenting, Siemens Healthineers developed a range of solutions.
Among these: an application that makes patients’ lives easier by offering them the ability to schedule and manage vaccination appointments via desktop and mobile devices.
As part of an interdisciplinary team, our UX specialists took over the app design, as well as workflow creation, front-end and accessibility. The Shui human-centered design elements again played an important role to ensure usability and a transparent, efficient process for patient and provider.
How UX influences workflows in every nook and cranny
Multiresistant germs and hospital-acquired infections are a global problem. The challenge all medical facilities therefore face is to provide effective clinical workflows while maintaining clean and disinfected equipment.
The team tackled this task with a company-wide hackathon. The result: the (Robust) Hygienic Design Concept – a framework for cleaning-oriented products that are durable over their entire life cycle. This involves aspects such as material, geometry, connections, surface coatings and production processes – in other words, more than the actual purpose of the device. Smart design and construction solutions are key to maintaining the highest standards of hygiene. They are implemented, for example, in imaging systems that support infection control measures.
How UX inspires workflow efficiency and AI development
As technology evolves, inefficient clinical workflows can be addressed in new ways, delivering value in the form of freed-up resources and other benefits. Voice UI for healthcare professionals is a good example of this: a solution that addresses a whole range of challenges that clinicians face on a regular basis, from imaging to maintaining hygiene standards and juggling patient needs to issuing commands to technicians when performing a high-precision procedure.
This innovative project revolves around the question: Can voice interaction improve clinical tasks? The system could solve basic current problems, but also lay the foundation for a future, intelligent, context-aware interventional voice assistant. By voice command it could simply adjust imaging settings or positions while keeping a sterile environment.
The first user tests were successful and sparked further ideas as the team observed an expectation among users for the Voice Assistant to be powerful and intelligent.
How UX helped shorten examination time by five minutes
MRI exams are a frequent and often crucial as well as incisive step in the patient journey. Our experience design specialists developed educational and relaxation materials to improve the patients’ experience. Reducing MRI exam times is beneficial for both the patients and the clinic.
In fact, this is what we have achieved: the scans were five minutes shorter when patients were prepared with an introductory video. This was the result of a clinical study with more than 140 patients at the University Hospital Erlangen. Furthermore, patients who watched the video that matched their individual coping style for anxiety – characterized by either the wish for information or the wish for distraction – experienced a significant relief of anxiety after watching the video, compared to a control group.
The human-centered design approach supports the preparation of patients for examinations according to their needs, thus facilitating smooth workflows for healthcare providers.
About keeping in touch
The future of healthcare holds many far-reaching challenges: a growing world population, partially in remote areas, the increase of diseases of civilization, the threat of further pandemics, and health-related hazards through climate change and its consequences.
To face the challenges ahead, healthcare is changing: it transitions from reactive to preventive, remote care, and AI-supported precision medicine. Thus, the focus on patient and user experience will become even more crucial. Staying in touch with medical professionals and patients will continue to shape our innovations and support our ultimate purpose: to pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere.
