Usability Begins with You

This phrase has been on our email signature for more than 20 years. Usability does start with you.

Section 508 and User-Centered Design

We've often blogged about Section 508 compliance as a means to convince very engineering-centric developers to consider their users.

Accessible designs work for everyone - see also Universal Design. Ever use a curb-cut?

By thinking about a disabled user and designing a solution that works for them, developers adopt a user-centered design strategy without even knowing it.

It is an excellent foot-in-the-door for designing for an admin user, a casual user, the sales team, an expert user, and many of other personas associated with the solution.

How to choose a (more) usable Electronic Health Record (EHR) system

The usability of the system is probably the most important factor in making an informed choice of which EHR to use for your practice. Most every bit of software says that it is easy to use, but how can you choose an EHR that is actually usable?

The myth of too many clicks

We have seen a number of recent blog posts and tweets complaining about EHRs having ‘too many clicks.’ (and a great video on youtube by ZDoggMD http://zdoggmd.com/ehr-state-of-mind/ '30 clicks for an Ambien?')

A number of people have proclaimed that reducing the number of clicks in an EHR as a method to improve EHR Usability. Multiple clicks are not a deterrent to usability and user satisfaction, in fact there are many occasions where having more clicks may actually improve usability.

The 5 U's of Usability and User-Centered Design:

  • User-centered Design
  • User-centered design is a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product, service or process are given the primary focus of attention at each stage of the design process.

    The main difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to accommodate the product (aka. Engineering-Centric Design).

    See also: http://www.w3.org/WAI/redesign/ucd

  • Usability Testing
  • Pages