Or how to design a great medical app.
Bad design kills. Literally.
Here’s some reasons:
- Poor readability
Small fonts are too difficult to read, but easy for a user to make a mistake in a patient’s card review. The list is usually compounded in alphabet order, which means that user will see many similar names and make a mistake. - Data errors
Apps, that are mostly functionable as pills notifications often causes a bad service for its audience, who rely and trust it. - Hard-to-Acquire Target
Target is anything that can be clicked or tapped and is required to:
a) being clear for identifying;
b) have a large enough area to avoid misclicking.
Each point of it causes a misunderstanding in modern user interface, and make a large disservice for the app design. But don’t worry, here we gathered some features to make your medical app fast, smart and efficient. In other words, made to save a life.
- Identify the problem that needs to be solved.
Ideally, every UX design should be human-oriented, but it’s extremely required when it comes to healthcare applications. - Brainstorm
The goal is to come up with as many ideas as possible, as it highers the chance of making beautiful, yet functional powerful design. - Empathize
Research and understand the problem by involving yourself into the audience that is expected to be affected by your design. Make it easier for the patient to feel care, attention and professional individual approach. It’s all about asking questions, not making presumptions.
2. Define Your Persona
Designing healthcare app may require a different approach compared to an ordinary app. Especially, when it comes to such sensible audience, as those who are searching for help in medical questions.
Make a full portrait of a typical user of your app. What is their pain? What’s the reason of installing your app? Why would they choose you?
Find a method to access your customers. Internet advertising will surely reach teens, young people and those poor ones who are currently looking for a new physician. But it won’t get the majority of Baby Boomers (people born in a period between 1945s-1960s), who isn’t familiar with smartphones and laptops, or a half of senior age people.
3. Get familiar with the apps you can find on App Store and Google Play.
Research the market competitors to find their strengths and weaknesses. Make SWOT-analysis.
You might even note your emotions after seeing each design. Make an analysis on what works best.
Advice: Reading customers reviews on Google Play or App Store can be really helpful. If you want to do best for your app — ask your customer how. For example, GoogleFit made a full design upgrade and the first review is “in order to simplify the app, you made it useless”. So, there is a fine line between effectiveness and uselessness.
Let’s say, your app development is concerned to help people with chronic illnesses track symptoms, triggers and treats over time. Flaredown app ‘s functions does just what it’s expected to. It’ build to track user’s motor coordination to being able to predict the conditions that may cause multiple sclerosis or brain fog.
Flaredown main interfaces on App Store
4. Make the app simple. And then much simple.
Imagine yourself during your clinical visit. How does the room looks? It’s all white and there’s nothing more to distract your eye. So, the app design should have a similar look, like nothing more and nothing less. Being minimalistic in such case means to give a clear and professional experience. Isn’t it what we seek when we’re reaching for the doctor?
It should be the aim #1 on improving medical care app UX.
As an example of a simple design, a diagnosis-oriented app named Ada fits perfectly. The app is driven by a bot, and once you feel unwell, you can start a conversation with Ada. It asks you a few questions to define the possible causes to make up a final assessment, a note on urgency and a possible ways to treat.
“Our design philosophy is: friendly conversation underpinned by medical precision.”
~ Dr. Claire Novorol, a co-founder of “Ada”.
5. Test, test. And test.
To perfect your medical app, design iteratively. It means testing every little change with a small amount of users. The more changes you do, the better your application will be.
“This is how I wish I’d always developed apps.”
~Alex White, Dynetics Inc.
Creative Director
Prototyping can be the cheapest way to make changes, because sometimes it requires just a sketchbook and a pencil. It allows you to know if your design isn’t working as fast as possible. Then iterate as much as possible.
The value of iteration in a usability design is perfectly illustrated by J.Nielsen and states for: Easy to learn, Easy to use, Easy to remember. And, what we adore most is it’s pleasant to use and causes few errors. So, the choice is up to you, but we strongly recommend you such cost-effective development method.
6. Make sure your audience trusts you.
Think about privacy and policy of your healthcare app through a design lens. Gather user data thoroughly, design with privacy in mind.
- If you are about to start developing a medical app, or you’re planning to improve it, it is never late to learn the edits of HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
Check out the paragraph “Security Terms” and implement them on your own app. - Provide your app with a two-factor authentication, like a password/voice recognition and a thumbprinting.
- All you need is just an email.
It’s a common practice for medical apps to ask the user’s name to enlarge the CRM base. But, there’s way more options to do it. So, it’s time and data saving to ask just for an email address. - As an example of a right data management, an app can actually save a life. FitBit app provided critical data to emergency personnel at a hospital where he arrived following a seizure. By looking at his Fitbit data, medical providers were able to determine that cardioverting an atrial fibrillation.
7. Choose wisely fonts and colors to perfect your app.
Note that human color perception may change as years pass by, so get to know color theory. Bright colours are usually used to get kid’s attention while elder people prefer more soothing and calm colors, like white or blue, as studies show.
To develop senior-oriented medical app, you may want to take into account those options:
- Higher font contrast, as this will make your text more readable. Text size and typeface also affect legibility greatly;
- Give cues in the interface about the actions user recently took;
- Manage the page title with the words the user had to click to reach the page;
- Make plenty of space between the button targets;
- Track the progress in processing the page, as seniors are likely to note every step of the progress.
If the majority of your audience is people with visual impairments, there’s a reason to make all the target buttons voice-dubbing.
Hope, those recommendations will help you to design a simple, yet functional easy-to-use app.
If you want to delight your users with a great product, contact me to create unique design solutions together.
Don’t forget to check out my Behance portfolio!