News and Insights

By Patricia Anderson With all the  press coverage on EpiPen prices , hopes are high for the development of new devices to compete with Mylan’s autoinjector. Other epinephrine injection devices have been on the market, and some are working to get to market but EpiPen currently rules the market. Epinephrine injectors have to fulfill a collection of rather unique usability criteria (be very portable, easy for a stranger off the street to use, quick to activate, easy enough for kids and adults, etc.) to be feasible options – a daunting task for medical device designers.  In a dream world, what kind of devices could compete with EpiPen? Designawards.core77.com  features an innovative and impressive student design for an Epinephrine injection device. This device, called ISA10 and designed by students at the Umeå institute of design in Sweden, features creative solutions to allow friends, strangers, and people experiencing an allergic attack to administer a dose of epin...

By Arathi Sethumadhavan I just finished reading Philip Kortum’s latest book on  Usability assessment: How to measure the usability of products, services, and systems . This is a very comprehensive book for beginners to understand what usability assessment is, why it is important, and the techniques to perform a usability evaluation. Below are the common myths on usability that the author discusses. I am sure several of you reading this have heard or experienced at least some of these. Usability assessment is complete if the product developers can use the product: Programmers, though skilled in developing the most robust code and algorithms often times fail to consider the expertise and skills of the actual users of the product. Therefore, they conclude that if they are able to use the system, the end users will have no trouble using the system as well. Usability assessment is just common sense: The author gives the example of fire trucks, which are usually painted r...

By Naomi Cherne If you are reading this blog, you are probably pretty comfortable with reading. You can engage with the text in your world to understand and evaluate your options, guide your actions, and pursue your goals. However, literacy is a struggle or even a barrier for lots of people.  If your medical device requires that people use text in any form, then you should consider the literacy of your user groups when thinking about usability. 35%  of adults in the US have limited health literacy 44%  of high school graduates and  76%  who did not complete high school have limited health literacy 17%  of adults in the US cannot draw low-level inferences from text 50%  of adults in the US cannot integrate, interpret, or synthesize information from complex texts 69%  of adults in the US who did not complete high school are at or below the lowest level of literacy proficiency In our experience, literacy can affect someone’s product ...

By Arathi Sethumadhavan Undoubtedly, icons have obvious advantages. They can be visually appealing and an effective way to communicate with users They can replace the need to translate text to several languages when your users come from all parts of the globe They can convey an idea in a matter of seconds compared to elaborate text They can show the strength of your brand They can be more aesthetic appealing They can create a more engaging experience for users Though icons have several advantages, these have obvious disadvantages as well. First, there are very few icons that are comprehensible by people all over the world. Second, when misinterpreted, users can infer the information that is being relayed to them erroneously, impacting the user experience (e.g., a shopper misinterpreting the security of a shopping site) as well as have severe consequences in safety-critical domains (e. g., a patient misinterpreting an icon). So, is the adage “a picture worth a thousa...

By Arathi Sethumadhavan The employees at Core Human Factors celebrated their Annual Holiday Party at a Philadelphia local restaurant with a New Orleans flavor called Bourbon Blue.  Great food and festive spirits abound, the fun culminated with a raffle drawing!

By Marc Egeth The FDA  asks  “consumers” to report “unexpected side effects after using a medical product, or experiencing other problems with any products that the agency regulates.” This includes “product quality problems and product use errors involving human health care products.” FDA directs “consumers” to  MedWatch , which provides on a  webform  the option to indicate, “Used a product incorrectly which could have or led to a problem.” A few minutes ago – after writing the previous paragraph, but before writing this paragraph – I went to get some lunch. On the way, I saw a man in an electric wheelchair stopped in the middle of a parking lot. I asked if he needed help, he said he did, and I pushed him to an electric outlet nearby. He said he thought he had charged it recently. I thought about asking him about whether he would be reporting his problem to MedWatch, but I figured the odds were basically 0% that is what he would be doing next, and furt...

Written by Sam Sye Recently, I was working on a project where the product under research involved removable components. During the study, it became increasingly apparent that many users encountered difficulty recognizing the need to remove such components, or how such a task could be accomplished. Color is a magnificent way to catch users’ attention and direct them to a course of action. However, as we soon discovered, color may carry unintended connotations for end users, which may ultimately backfire. In particular, this product used black arrows to indicate how to remove certain components of the device. The rationale for this particular choice of hue was that it provided the greatest contrast to the white background of the device. Under this criterion, the color of the arrows worked fabulously. Participants indicated this design was eye-catching, easy to see and understand. In the US, the design was vastly preferred to other alternatives. When we tested the same de...