Icon and user interface design for emergency medical information systems: A case study

This is a review of Salmana, B. Y., Chengb, H.-I., & Patterson, P. E. 2012 article, “Icon and user interface design for emergency medical information systems: A case study”.

Abstract

Researchers designed a collaborative icon and graphical user interface design process between medical personnel and professional designers to develop a usable system for emergency medical information systems. They performed different steps such as analysis, professionals survey, icon sketching, result evaluation, and on premise installation to achieve user satisfaction for the final icon design which comes with user familiarity and friendliness. Research Design The main approach which has taken in this research for the process of medical information system development was a user centered development method which focused on users from the initial stage of development to final installation. In order to implement this approach, researchers took the following steps:

1. Identification of the final user and elicitation of their usage context
2. Business and functional requirements gathering
3. System design
4. Test system usability

The researchers explain how they applied ethnographical observations and contextual inquiry techniques in their system pre-design stage. They indicate that “ethnographical observations did not provide significant results” but they found the contextual inquiry useful in their research.

Methods

In order to introduce the study to the medical personnel of case study sites, verify research task analysis results, and collect employee feedback about icon, researchers performed a survey meeting with emergency personnel. They have collected 23 tasks from this meeting and asked emergency unit personnel with 85% rate of familiarity with computer icons to draw icons for these tasks. Then they evaluated and examined sketched icons and made modification by ergonomists and icon designers. Next, they evaluated the understandability of their sketches results by asking another group of medical personnel to test icons understandability by matching the icons to the correspondent tasks.

Results and Discussion

Since medical personnel had interest in the final results of the research and enjoyed the process of developing icons and graphical user interface, researchers believe that the participatory design was useful. In addition, they also believe that this process produces better design, which will allow for easier use and asserted that “participatory icon design process was effective in reducing system complexity and increasing usability”.

Comments

This research emphasized on an important aspect of graphical user interface design of electronic healthcare record systems and the impact of user centered icon and layout design on the final usability and user acceptance of the system. There is a point which has mentioned in the by the authors as well which needs more attentions and it is the fact that the sample of medical personal in this case study has limited to one region within an specific country (Turkey, in this case). As an instance, researchers mention that most of the personnel within case study hospitals were Muslim and proposed a mosque for the “Religion” sign. The researchers resolved this issue by replacing 2 praying hands with original suggested icon by the employees. The fact is that there are some uncertainties about other user comprehensions related to the icons designed. The fact is that users with different background and level of expertise might comprehend icons with a completely different meaning.