Context is everything when doing front-end, qualitative research for product development. It’s one thing to ask open-ended, probing questions about the task under consideration, but it’s another to ask those questions in a setting that allows an interviewee to interact with his or her environment as he or she answers. In someone’s “natural” environment, you will get much deeper recall, demonstration and insight than you typically will in a focus group facility. But, when you are interested in doing this type of work with health care clinicians, being able to do a deep extended interview in a clinical environment can be the stuff of dreams – due to the hectic and sometimes chaotic nature of clinical healthcare settings. Imagine trying to interview an emergency room nurse about a particular device that she regularly uses – in the middle of the emergency room. 

Whether one is aiming for efficiency gains, safety improvements, a better patient experience, or better clinical outcomes, employing a human centered design approach acknowledges that the building blocks of any healthcare system are its people; patients, physicians, nurses, technicians, administrators, and others. It embraces the variability and complexity of humans, as individuals and en masse. It exposes and defines the tolerance bands that will allow people to operate effectively in situ rather than in a standard operating procedure or process flow diagram. Without a fundamental understanding of these critical variables, any system design is destined for challenges, and at worst, failure.

In healthcare systems—process or product—a human centered design approach prioritizes usability and practical adoption for optimal outcome. Introducing change in complex systems is rarely easy. Stakeholders need to be participants in the co-development process if they are to be active champions of the implementation. Top down recommendations are often too general to be useful or too specific to account for the unique attributes of systems. And approaches that are derivatives of manufacturing practices, while they may have some adaptable elements, often become unwieldy, cold, and impractical when applied to the nexus of highly-trained professionals and unique patient presentations that characterize most provider environments.

As the healthcare industry is forced to deal with its significant challenges in the coming decade, the fact that it is predominantly an industry of people will spawn widespread adoption and adaptation of human factors design expertise. The leaders have already begun.