User Experience

A collection of 14  Posts

How do you decide which features to add to your software?

Given the well-warranted focus on design these days it’s always difficult to find the right balance between features that we should add to our software and those that we leave out. I was running a class recently on how to build product roadmaps for health IT apps / medical device software and the question of how we should decide which features to add came up. Here’s are just a few of the facets I talked about during that lecture:

One of the most important activities you can undertake before you begin your EHR implementation journey is to standardize and simplify your processes to help prepare for automation. Unlike humans, which can handle diversity, computers hate variations. Before you begin your software selection process, get help from a practice consultant to reduce the number of appointment types you manage, reduce the number of different forms you use, ensure that your charting categories (“Labs”, “Notes”, etc.

Productivity loss and workflow disruptions are commonplace as our industry gets on the Meaningful Use bandwagon and is starting to adopt EHR systems at a slightly more rapid pace than in previous years (things aren’t really as rosy as many think, but the pace is picking up). The reason we have productivity loss is that we focus changing the behaviors of our most expensive resources too early in our automation journeys – we go after doctors first.

I met researchers from Macadamian, a global UI design and innovation studio that has been doing some great work in the health IT usability space, at the recent EHR Usability Symposium held at NIST a couple of months ago. I was immediately impressed by their work so when they asked me to work with them on presenting NIST’s new Usability Criteria for Health IT and EHR Software document, I welcomed the opportunity.

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