I have been around a few medical emergency situations and thoughI think it is common for these situations to be stressful, I am always surprised at just how incredibly stressful they end up being. The last thing a would-be helper needs at these moments is confusion around how to help the person in need. As a result, I am a big fan of the design efforts many health care product companies put into their user experiences.

A great example of usable design in the medical space is the IntelligentFirstAid Talking Kit. I think most everyone has opened a big first aid kit and spent a minute hunting for the item they needed. The designers of this kit, however, have obviously paid attention to the user's task flow.

With the IntelligentFirstAid Kit, the supplies are divided by type of injury, e.g. there are burn, bleeding, and bone packs. Each pack contains appropriate supplies and instructions for handling the specified type of injury. In addition, there are color and icon codings that identify pressable buttons which play audio instructions for treating an injury. This seems like a great idea for emergency situations since reading instructions may be difficult while the helper is distracted by the injury. In fact, other emergency medical products use this interaction as well [see the Philips HeartStart Defibrillator].

I also like how the instructional cards "show instead of tell" the user how to treat an injury. This is a typical usability heuristic, or rule of thumb. The system should not overload the user with text to read when instructions can be explained through a simple visual. No one has time to read a paragraph of text from a medical journal in the middle of a stressful situation.

If any readers have examples of interesting, usable, or even unusable designs in the medical field, I would love to hear about it.

[via Cool Hunting]

Labels: health, safety, usability