4 ms·

As far as I am aware, for every significant UI change we do at the medical device company I am working for, we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs)

by seren 4y ago

As far as I am aware, for every significant UI change we do at the medical device company I am working for, we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs) to our facility and we have to do some validation tests, and finally show these validation results to the FDA before releasing the product.

meragrin_ 4y ago
> we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs) to our facility Are they the same group of people each time?
- seren 4y ago
  I am not really involved with these tests: I believe they are not the same people every time, because doctors tend to be quite busy, and don't have much free time available. They are coming at least from different continents, but obviously to answer the sibling's comment they are selected by the company, from a pool of advanced users or early adopters, so not necessarily a good reflection of the whole population of final users. And this is an issue in itself because the product is influenced by expert users, but at least, you cannot release a totally horrible or misleading UI that no user has ever seen before. The other side effect, intended or not, is that you cannot change the UI at every iteration of the product because these tests tends to be costly, as a result, the evolution of the design is quite conservative, which might also explain in part why medical devices UI tends to look "outdated".
couchand 4y ago
Is your panel of end users self-selected, by chance?
spaetzleesser 4y ago
"As far as I am aware, for every significant UI change we do at the medical device company I am working for, we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs) to our facility and we have to do some validation tests, and finally show these validation results to the FDA before releasing the product." I also work for a device company and a lot of these panel members aren't really competent at giving good feedback because they lack the technical knowledge. And the FDA mostly just checks for completeness of paperwork. They look at the actual product only once there is a problem in the field.

by seren 4y ago

meragrin_ 4y ago

> we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs) to our facility Are they the same group of people each time?

seren 4y ago
I am not really involved with these tests: I believe they are not the same people every time, because doctors tend to be quite busy, and don't have much free time available. They are coming at least from different continents, but obviously to answer the sibling's comment they are selected by the company, from a pool of advanced users or early adopters, so not necessarily a good reflection of the whole population of final users. And this is an issue in itself because the product is influenced by expert users, but at least, you cannot release a totally horrible or misleading UI that no user has ever seen before. The other side effect, intended or not, is that you cannot change the UI at every iteration of the product because these tests tends to be costly, as a result, the evolution of the design is quite conservative, which might also explain in part why medical devices UI tends to look "outdated".

couchand 4y ago

Is your panel of end users self-selected, by chance?

spaetzleesser 4y ago

"As far as I am aware, for every significant UI change we do at the medical device company I am working for, we bring a panel of final users (doctors and techs) to our facility and we have to do some validation tests, and finally show these validation results to the FDA before releasing the product." I also work for a device company and a lot of these panel members aren't really competent at giving good feedback because they lack the technical knowledge. And the FDA mostly just checks for completeness of paperwork. They look at the actual product only once there is a problem in the field.