How Important is UI Design For The Healthcare Industry
Last updated on September 21st, 2023 at 09:21 am
Today, in this era healthcare applications are a better way for people to remain health-conscious. People are becoming more aware of health issues and knowledgeable enough to choose even their diet plan by themselves. The healthcare industry is now sought by people and then for the betterment of a healthy lifestyle.
According to the statistics, 62.7 million health application users were noted in 2018, whereas in 2020, there was an increase in the number to 87.4 million.
Anyways, the UI (user interface) makes a big difference in the digital market. Amazon has the most designed UI applications, whereas Snapchat and Instagram are widely used applications because of their design.
How Important is UI Design for the Healthcare Industry?
The pandemic has made people stay indoors and manage all the facilities on their own. Around the world, 656 million people have downloaded healthcare applications in 2020.
It makes a noticeable difference in the healthcare industry, increasing the usage of healthcare applications and making it mandatory for healthcare providers to supply the applications with good UI design.
The healthcare applications should be approachable and could act as a guide to the next prompt action. So, UI design matters a lot in the development of healthcare applications.
What are the things that are taken care of during UI design?
Basic research includes the answers to these questions:
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the basic need of the audience?
- What is the purpose?
As we previously discussed, the target of the product should be meaningfully the audience. The basic need of providing the product should be predefined. As we know one product can not satisfy all the requirements, though the purpose of creating the application must suit the requirements.
To be more precise in this task, I have many initiatives to define it such as:
What is a survey?
Before creating a survey, it’s important to think about its purpose. Common purposes include:
- Compiling market research
- Soliciting feedback
- Monitoring performance
Write down specific knowledge you’d like to gain from your survey, along with a couple of simple questions you think might answer your hypotheses (including the set of possible answers).
When starting any project, one should start with a glance and a hypothesis. As shown in the image you can put any smart guess as a hypothesis. Next to the answers, write down the percentage of responses you’d expect in each bucket—comparing the future results against these guesses will reveal where your intuition is strong and where blind spots exist.
Remember these practices will give you more precise actions and judgments to follow, and more sample size of stakeholders can help in better understanding.
Probably the ratio of sample size is well distributed.
The best questions and answers style.
The best practice is you define the limits of the questions so that the user knows the buffer zone to lay in.
There are four main question and answer styles, and therefore four main response data types:
- Categorical types: Unordered labels like colors or brand names; also known as “nominal”
- Ordered types: Likert scales like “strongly disagree to strongly agree” or “never too often”
- Interval types: Ranges like “number of employees”
- Ratio types: Numbers like inches of rain
How to phrase questions and answers?
The questions are designed in such a way that the motto of conducting the survey gets solved. You can think from the respondent’s perspective that people do not feel that it is a waste of time. People can understand your survey questions very well and they can be answerable very easily.
Allow NA and neutral responses.
Allow the respondents to remain neutral if they want to remain neutral or do not want to answer such questions. Because you force them to answer they can manipulate the responses and it will create hurdles in your survey because you mislead the data.
Use simple language and avoid compound questions.
You must use simple language to make people understand so that they can respond to your answer easily. Also, you should not use compound questions. Such as a question with the range; rate the range, ranges from 1-1100…
As with that, you can get as many ranges to follow because every one of them can pick any number between the range provided, and it will manipulate your data.
To sum up by using these tips, broadly you can get your analysis done and you can understand your users very well.
Talking about the healthcare applications it is mainly designed for patients and generally look out for the following data:
- EHR electronic health record
- Medications
- Diagnostics
- Medical recommendation/ therapy suggestions
What is UI design?
“UI (user interface) design is the process of designing the visual interface of digital products, most commonly websites and apps screens to facilitate the user interaction.”
Users have become more familiar with the interfaces and colors provided by professionals. UI design involves the complex art of typography, color, and guidance for the user, whereas those elements are to keep the cognitive load to the minimum while creating beautiful unique experiences.
Today’s digitally-led landscape has recognized the good business that exceptional UI design does for recognition and trust.
What are the challenges in UI/UX development for healthcare?
Diversity:
The diversity here means the diverse group of people using the applications. For instance, it may be nurses, doctors, and other surgeons or professionals. Talking about other peer groups it may be younger ones / older ones and other peer groups of children.
Empathy mapping:
Here it means that not every person is born with the same abilities to understand, to see, or to function. Thus, a survey and mapping are a must for the people and functionality of the application.
Usage:
The app makers can predefine where the application gets fitted into; it might be home labs, hospitals, emergency services, etc. The predefined notion before app development is a must.
Dynamic:
The healthcare applications should meet the accountability with current applications and the digital interface that is going on. It should be flexible and scalable in all better ways and market standards.
On the other side, patients have very minimal information as per as health is concerned.
Addressing every redressal is the task of healthcare applications.
There begins the actual process of healthcare application, as it addresses the patients, doctors, nurses, and many more, let us discuss the element of UI design of the applications.
What are the UI design elements that need to be considered?
Colors:
Colors play an important role in the healthcare industry, so it is important for healthcare applications too. The logo signs the colors used in the background and the collection theme colors used affect the person unconsciously.
It makes changes in using warm and cool colors. White color is a good choice to use because it gives the perception of relaxation. The blue color also makes a person cool and calm. Green is also a good choice as it precepts growth and vitality.
Use the colors so wisely, the user’s eyes cannot feel stress while using the applications. and the mandatories like the logo and suggestion box are nicely written with a balanced color.
Typography:
As you do not have to entertain the user with the font style and colors of the text, instead of conveying the right message to the user is your right choice. Do not fascinate the user with that, you can judge the used text by how long it can affect the user. For instance: reading cursive is more difficult than writing large fonts. Use the fonts and font type wisely.
Navigation:
Navigation is an added feature of the application because the buttons, bar, and scroll menu play a huge impact on the user. So the icons, buttons, and menus are placed very wisely… “buttons at the right place provide the glitch-free experience.”
Images:
Images should be used in a way that creates a good impression on the user’s mind. It replicates the motto of the application which should be reflective.
Speed:
The speed of the application should be in a way that balances the functional features and UI elements of the application. The decorum should go smoothly.
The most common mistake that one makes is, that there are numerous devices that your application can be installed on. Make it compatible with every device so that every device whether it is a smartphone, smartwatch, or laptop can work efficiently.
What are the challenges faced by developers during UI design?
Target hardware:
The application should be compatible with any hardware such as a tablet, smartphone, laptop, etc patients’ engagement with the application is very important, but it is expected that the engagement with tablets is enhanced more than the application.
Compatibility:
The application should be compatible with every management system, current market trends, and technology. In developing countries the trends of traditional hosting are there, one should keep in mind at the time of designing the application.
UI consideration:
UI plays an important role in the network spreading of healthcare applications. The patient and doctors both should follow the process of upgrading. Just like a patient needs to enter the details of a test, health issues and all; the doctor needs to upgrade the information as well.
The application programming interface:
The Application Programming Interface (API) as the name suggests, is a method or procedure that performs a particular task or software interaction. When the user logs into the app, an API request to connect your device to a remote server supports authentication. It is very important to add API parts in the event of patient commitment alternatives to verify your device to access the database of the key physician. The APIs used commonly are BOX API, HUMAN API, BETTER DOCTOR, DOXIMITY, and DR.CHRONO.
Testing:
Testing is important during the development of the application, usability testing is very helpful in conducting the functionality and scalability better.
For example: if the application is designed for asthma patients, a normal person cannot role-play the disease symptoms. Hence, actual patients must be considered for testing.
Evolve continuously:
For instance, developing an app by creating slow progressions such as adding one-by-one features creates the curiosity of the user. Before creating an app, you just need to know more about agile growth and exercise it.
Minimal viable product:
It asks for feedback and answers the queries of the user, but designers should take care that the app may not ask for feedback now and then, for every feature because the user may get irritated with it and stop using the application. It’s a long way to go for healthcare applications.
Data security:
The apps these days are designed in such a way that designers are avoiding storing app information on the computer for safety reasons. It is mandatory to store information on cloud servers.
If your apps connect to the clinical management system limit the number of simultaneous API demands. The data transfer between the device and the secure remote server is open to government agencies fraudulent organizations and people intercepting communication.
Device security:
While designing the things to consider are authentication control, remote and automatic tools, installing security programs, user encryption, and regular updates all these need to cover all attention.
Patient recorded outcomes:
The progress report and the patient outcomes should be recorded which helps patients and doctors to maintain the records.
HIPAA:
The three components of HIPAA are your policies, record keeping, technology, and building safety. HIPAA follows the strict security of all data given or sorted to it.
Conclusion:
It is estimated that the impact of wearables in the health sector (in comparison to other sectors) is 85%, while also highlighting a domino effect technologies like Telemedicine, Robotics, EHR*AI, etc. would have on the future of the industry and many interrelated ones such as the insurance industry, banking industry, healthcare vendors and suppliers, etc.
The estimated data increase the feasibility of healthcare applications, the designing part is becoming very dynamic day by day, but to maintain the decorum of the current inventions all these recommendations will help you out.
