When I was putting together a presentation on User Experience and Healthcare for Refresh Portland, I stepped back to see if I do anything differently when designing products and applications for Healthcare clients than I do for clients in other industries. After looking at the emerging trends in the Healthcare industry and the shifting landscape of online user behavior, it became clear to me that when designing for Healthcare, I focus more user research and I prefer smaller, more iterative cycles within the design process.

The attached presentation details my insights on the subject and describes the steps I feel one should focus on when designing products and applications for Healthcare users.

At a high level these are:

1)    Gather as much information as possible about your users.
2)    Select research methods that allow face time with the users.
3)    Use details about your user’s behavior to spark new concepts.
4)    Employ visualization techniques to help users articulate their needs.
5)    Build smaller iterations more frequently, to validate concepts and feature sets.

Tags: Refresh Portland, User Research, Web 2.0