Intuitive Medical Device Design

Streamlining an outdated medical device UI/UX

Overview/background

A client approached our team at Laut Design with an innovative, noninvasive therapy device for psychiatric disorders. The device used electrical stimulation to activate mood receptors in the brain, offering long-lasting relief to patients.

Goal

Modernize the touchscreen user interface, improve the prescriber/technician experience, and streamline the information architecture.

Process Overview

Discovery Phase

Legacy User Interface

The legacy design featured bottom tabs for navigation between the "MT Locate", "MT Level", patient ID, settings, and end session screens. The screen layout and controls were also not intuitive. Parts of the interface were very crowded with controls while others were sparse, making it challenging to interact via touch.

Binary settings, like switching modes, were displayed via separate buttons rather than toggles or drop-downs. However, studying the existing interface, as well as the user manual, did show that certain controls were only relevant during treatment. In contrast, others could be accessed at any time (like chair adjustments).

Current experience audit

With a hierarchical task analysis, we noted all the essential parts of a successful first treatment. Certain procedures must be performed in a specific order; for instance, treatment cannot begin until the correct location for the coil and the appropriate level of stimulation are identified.

Patients are crucial to understanding the user experience, but they primarily interact with the device by sitting in its chair and waiting during treatment. However, prescribers (doctors) and technicians (licensed nurses) would interact with the interface directly via touch. Prescribers would complete all first-time treatments.

Information Architecture - Affinity Maps

By sorting the core features of the device with sticky notes, we identified common characteristics like what was informational, a visual aid, and a control. We also identified which items needed to be displayed together and which could be secondary or tertiary in the experience.

Recommendation: Home Dashboard

The navigation lacked a home dashboard to launch treatment, monitor progress, and house common controls like chair position. Adding a dashboard could simplify the new technician onboarding process and keep secondary settings out of the way during treatment, but still easy to access.

Sketching

With these groupings in mind, we sketched key screens and focused on the proximity of items and their interaction cost. Doing this on a whiteboard allowed for real-time discussion around touch interaction with different controls.

Wireframes

With the most important screens taking shape, we also began to design the user flows; logging in, setting up, locating the treatment "MT" site, selecting the "MT" level, and performing a treatment. Since our knowledge of the device was still growing, we had many check-ins with our client contacts during this phase to ensure accuracy.

1.Home Screen

The home screen was well received; participants noted that it felt like a helpful guide during setup.

2. Navigation

There was some confusion about how to enter and exit the home screen via the drawer tab.

3. Scale

Some elements of the design were too small to interact with or unclear they were tappable. Other parts were too large and distracting, like the visual of the patient's head.

Retrospective refinement

This project unfortunately was paused after this phase due to the client needing to secure more funding.

However, I wanted to explore a high-fidelity, updated design given the user feedback and UX knowledge I’ve gained since. I particularly wanted to improve the navigation, hierarchy, and the design system.

Recap of what to improve

• Improve the home dashboard navigation

• Improve scale and components

• Improve hierarchy and move into high-fidelity

Navigation

Design System

What I learned