ABSTRACT
Biomedical applications and device usage are growing at a rapid pace and their usage has increased exponentially due to the current pandemic situations like COVID-19. These applications and devices are not only used in clinical settings but also used domestically and on a need basis. With the growing usage of these applications and devices, there is a felt need for the optimal design of interactive systems from both usability and user experience standpoints. Existing biomedical applications and devices exhibit several gaps and issues as many of them are legacy devices that were produced several decades ago. Newer approaches and methodologies need to be discussed during the design phase and used during the application/product delivery phase.
User-cenetred design (UCD) is discussed in this chapter and encouraged during the entire application product life cycle. UCD is primarily an iterative design process. In the UCD process, the software and system designers interact with the end users and their needs in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. An important feature of UCD is it considers whole user experience (UX) elements such as users, applications, devices, tasks, environments etc.
The importance of involving professionals such as physicians, hardware engineers, software engineers, and domain experts in each phase is discussed. It is important to note that digital projects that produce biomedical applications and devices are an important organizational investment. According to the IEEE 2005 research, approximately $1 trillion per year was spent on IT worldwide. Having a good user experience in biomedical applications will result in fewer application and software errors, less cost of development and maintenance, and increased productivity. This chapter discusses the fundamental user needs when operating or using biomedical applications. The user needs such as easy access to web elements, and actions on the web elements including easy access to the users with visual challenges are discussed. These needs are studied and applied during the systems design phase and eventually get transformed into applications with superior UX.
