User experience design for healthcare

With medical devices becoming more portable and user-friendly, many healthcare processes are shifting to the hands and homes of patients. Technical communicators working in the healthcare industry are facing a new audience with different expectations and in an increasing number of settings.

Text by Kirk St.Amant

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Image: © deimagine/istockphoto.com

New healthcare technologies are entering the marketplace every day. These include wearable devices that monitor processes like a person’s heartbeat as well as technologies that assess biochemical functions, such as checking insulin levels. These developments mean that individuals are performing health and medical activities outside of formal healthcare settings at an increasing rate. To design usable products, developers need a deep understanding of their users’ experiences.

This understanding of users involves more than knowing who the audience is. It also requires knowing when, where, and how individuals use technologies to perform healthcare processes. This article presents approaches technical communicators can use to identify user expectations and help to develop more usable healthcare products.

Experiences and expectations

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