2020・Healthcare・Multi-device・Concept tested
Philips / Electrocardiography Monitor Concept
Validated design concepts for a wireless ECG monitor via storyboarding, usability testing, and prototyping. The updated solution won iF 2025 design award.
Team
1 Senior product designer, 1 Usability researcher, 1 Industrial designer, 1 PM
Role
Product design
Timeline
2020.10-2020.12
Problem statement
Some MDs find that the wireless system could be a solution to provide a one-to-many system, to record a long time(5mins) data and make more accurate measurements. Based on this, we have our initial problem:
How might we provide a wireless solution to improve efficiency and guarantee results in ECG diagnosis?
Final solution
Wireless PIM
A Wireless PIM that can enable patients to wear and record a long time disclose ECG data.
Main Device
Created a new tab for the current main device to manage the wireless devices and view transmitting ECG data.
Inpatient:
Wireless ECG enables technicians to perform rapid 10s exams across multiple patients.
Outpatient:
Patients pre-wear devices, allowing doctors to analyze extended data remotely for accurate.
Ideation
Designed the initial wireframes
Based on the use cases we began to ideate. I followed two basic principles: one is to ensure feasibility, because it is a healthcare project, sometimes you can not think too wildly, it is important to keep discussing with professionals in this field to make sure our ideations are on the right track.
Another thing is that always consider comprehensively, just I mentioned before, there are different users related to this project.
I designed the wireframes for different features:
02 How might we reduce the hassle for users to operate on a wireless device with a small screen?
Following some principles for the usability of small screen design, I did some design iterations:
Simplify Things
Provided a clear display and ditch unnecessary visual information
Step-by-Step Operations
Control the actions that the user needs to complete on a single screen
Design for Fat Fingers
Make sure the targets have enough space and size to be clicked
Evaluation
Collaborated with the U.S Team to validate the concept
Finally, our team used clickable prototypes to conduct moderate user testing with 6 clinical users. The testing was conducted in Boston, I was responsible for preparing the prototypes and writing the proposals.
Feedback
After the testing, our team gained some great insights to help us move forward :)
What worked well
2.8 inch screen is sufficient for users to both view and touch
The overall workflow is well accepted
Users like the design of the large physical button
The small keyboard is good for occasional use
Possible improvements
Need to include notification about the lead connect issues(bad signal, lead reversal...)
Need to include a timeline when scrolling the waveforms
Terminology needs to be considered for better understood and recognized
Learnings
Bringing validations to early stages
Sometimes minimal testing (e.g. simply asking the internal customers, paper prototypes) play a big role to identify problems with the current solution.
Good documentation brings efficiency to collaboration
The documentation can help you and your team members to find the info they need, especially if you are surrounded by a large number of different versions of files to collaborate with people remotely.
