The ten steps towards User Centered Design

For the first time, the Future Health Technologies (FHT) programme organised a workshop for researchers to learn the basic concept of User-Centred Design (UCD). UCD is a key aspect in developing mobile health technologies to transform the healthcare system towards a community-based and patient-centric model along the continuum of care across all of the FHT’s clinical use cases such as, fractures and falls (Module 1), pre-diabetes and pre-depression (Module 2), and stroke (Module 3).

The workshop focused on fostering user participation and expanding the participants’ knowledge on usability evaluation techniques. The following list is a summary of the ten steps towards UCD outlined by Jan Meyer, PhD student at the RELAB ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Roger Gassert, FHT Module Head and Principal Investigator of Connected Rehabilitation Technology and Assistive Devices:

1. Consider and empathise with the people who are confronted with the problem. Also, contemplate and involve other users or stakeholders of the usage context, not just the primary user.
2. Empathise with users through active and personal interaction without assuming complete knowledge on their problem just from studying it.
3. Test a low-fidelity, rapid prototype early on rather than work years on creating an assumedly perfect solution. Test and evaluate to improve the solution /design and not for the sake of publications.
4. First impressions are important, but also challenging. Give users time to learn and accommodate to your solution.
5. Train to be a good moderator. Do not justify or defend the design but appreciate critical user feedback. Try to minimise any bias when testing, interviewing, and guiding users.
6. Be ready to iterate upon user feedback as the first try may not always be successful.
7. Take every user's opinion to be equally important but be aware that their context may differ drastically (skills, knowledge, environment, daily mood, etc.).
8. Test with more users to identify recurring issues that need to be addressed first although a single user test can give you enough data to rethink your design.
9. Plan and allocate your time and efforts accordingly. User-centered design is resource-intensive.
10. Remember that the final aim is to solve a people problem, not a technology problem.

This UCD workshop is the first internal workshop of its kind that has been organised for FHT researchers. Moving forward, the FHT programme is looking at organising more workshops to equip researchers with useful skills and knowledge.