Linknote — — 185 words

Accessibility — User experience

Work:

Getting to the root causes of usability errors and accessibility problems — User Vision

Perception–Cognition–Action (PCA) analysis is a method of uncovering the root causes of usability errors and accessibility challenges in systems. By understanding these underlying issues, designs can be enhanced in order to avoid hazardous situations and cater to a wide array of user needs.

The approach is particularly recommended for medical devices, and is described in the international standard IEC 62366 on the application of usability engineering to medical devices. But this powerful technique can go so much further than that. It can help us understand how to improve usability and accessibility for a wide range of products.

My article for the User Vision website describes how the Perception–Cognition–Action approach works, how it aligns with established accessibility best practice, and how we at User Vision have applied it to transform a complex medical system used by both patients and healthcare practitioners.

I will also be speaking about the technique at this week’s UX Edinburgh meetup, which is an accessibility special in recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. If you are around on Thursday 16 May at 18:30, it would be great to see you there.

Article — — 1,945 words

Uncategorised

Me, Izzy and Alex in our back garden

Isobel is our first baby, so it’s difficult to compare having a baby during coronavirus to other times. But it does seem like a strange time to have a baby. There are many disadvantages to the current situation. But there are also some interesting advantages, particularly for me as a father.

Linknote — — 52 words

Current affairs — Society

People with mental health conditions say the coronavirus has plunged UK treatment services into crisis — Alex Spence — BuzzFeed News

A person pasting a poster to a wall. The poster says: "Be kind. Let's look out for one another."

The effects of coronavirus and the lockdown on people with mental health conditions.

I fear that when this pandemic is over, the actual death toll will number far higher than those whose deaths were directly caused by Covid-19. I foresee a mental health crisis with no resources left to deal with it.

Linknote — — 90 words

Business — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Building a design team from scratch in a large and complex organisation — Simon Dixon

I especially like the points this article makes about why design needs to go beyond digital.

Even though I have worked primarily in digital teams, I have always believed in making things better not just digital. In health especially, we need to remember that people are complex human beings in a whole variety of circumstances and not simply a collection of user needs.

More food for thought as I begin thinking more about how we need to move beyond individual user needs and design for something that goes beyond that.

Linknote — — 129 words

Content design — Human-centred approaches

Every breath you take, every move they make counts for WA paramedics

Fascinating examples of how an ambulance service has experimented with their communications to save lives. A great example of how to use small experiments and tests to monitor improvements.

Asking “tell me what’s happened” instead of “tell me what happened” saves a staggering nine seconds, on average, per emergency call.

Studies have shown the first phrase prompts an immediate focus on the relevant detail, while the second prompts panicked callers on the line to tell meandering stories, full of unnecessary detail.

Saying “We’re going to do CPR,” instead of asking “Do you want to do CPR?” means a sharp rise in the number of bystanders agreeing to perform first aid while waiting for an ambulance.

Linknote — — 94 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology — User experience

Design flaws in electronic health records can harm patients, study finds

We know that poor usability can lead to disastrous consequences. Think to the recent case of the accidental missile alert in Hawaii.

This is a more rigorous, academic investigation into the negative consequences of poor usability in electronic health records. The study even suggests that bad usability may have caused deaths.

Some 557 (0.03 percent) reports had “language explicitly suggesting EHR usability contributed to possible patient harm,” and among those, 80 caused temporary harm, seven may have caused permanent harm and two may have been fatal.