By Nitin Goyal, MD, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Founder & CEO at Pulse Platform. Originally published on Quora.
Ignoring the impact of user interface design is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
Iâve seen so many apps that donât focus on UI the way they should. The designs donât consider problems from the consumerâs point of view or reflect the purpose of the apps.
Theyâre static. They arenât evolving with the user or modifying as users change.
At Pulse, we focus heavily on UI design.
Recently, our mobile app and web dashboard won a Muse Creative Award and a Davey Award for design. Weâve also had positive user feedback, which encourages us to constantly update and improve the experience. That being said, hereâs why UI is essential to the success of any digital health platform.
1. It Highlights Value
The interface is your initial pitch to the user. You want to show your app holds value for them. A poor design immediately tells the user it has little value, no matter how useful it may actually be.
Many of the apps we use today are overly complicated. Iâm a young guy who runs a tech company (Iâd like to consider myself reasonably âtech-savvyâ), and I occasionally get confused when I open some of them. I wind up looking at the interface wondering, âWait, what do I do now?â
That canât be your patientâs reaction. UI is so important because the platform has to present itself to the user and make the next steps very clear. The design has to be intuitive, and the interface has to walk the user through those steps.
Think of it this way: Your interface has to cater to the most difficult person to reach, without alienating everyone else. It has to appeal to the broadest possible level of the population and show a clear value to nearly everyone who opens the app.
2. Itâs Your Connection With Users
The interface is how you truly connect with users. Ignoring it means youâre ignoring that connection. Instead, focus on who will use your appâââand how theyâll use it. Build the interface with those ideal users in mind.
Hereâs an example:
Our application, Pulse, is for people who are having a joint replacement surgery. The average age of that person is about 63 years old. So, to connect with these people, we had to ask some questions about them.
Where are they going to be using the appâââin the hospital or at home on a recliner?
Are they using their phone or a tablet? Will they have the device in front of them? Will they have space to do the exercises weâre recommending?
Then, we created a UI design that reflected those answers.
We had to think about all of those questions (and many more) when we were designing the interface, because we wanted users to like interacting with the platform.
A lot of our patients wear reading glasses or have a larger text size on their phone. Itâs part of getting older, right? So, we made sure to use larger buttons and text to make the app easier to interact with.
But remember, your users arenât staticâââand your design shouldnât be either. When we started designing the app three years ago, our current patients were a few years younger. We always have to keep that in mind, because as different generations enter our demographic, theyâre going to be more entrenched in technology. Someone whoâs 50 right now is probably more tech-savvy than someone whoâs 63.
Our average patient is going to change over time. Our goal is to change with them and keep that connection in place.
3. It Simplifies Processes
One fault Iâve seen with other digital health apps is that theyâre too complex. They require a massive effort on the providerâs part to integrate them into the workflow of the hospital or practice. Processes have to be changed, and complexity actually increases.
One thing that we really focused on with our Pulse platform was designing it for both patients and providers. We knew that to be successful, it wasnât enough for just the patients to love it. We needed doctors, hospitals, and allied health professionals to understand the value and decide to use it with their patients.
We thought, âHey, why not make this easier? Letâs fit into the current workflow.â
Truthfully, itâs difficult to get buy-in when youâre trying to tell someone that theyâre doing something wrong. That they need to change and do it your way. Why would they change everything just for your platform? Instead, just make it simpler.
The goal is to make your platform so easy and so powerful that every interaction is useful. When I present to any group or hospital system, I always hear the same responses.
âWow, that looks so cool. I understand it. It makes sense. I want to interact with that.â
Thatâs what having a great UI design will do for you. It lets people look at your platform and immediately see something they want to work with. It tells them that this app is just as valuable as youâre promising.
By Nitin Goyal, MD, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Founder & CEO at Pulse Platform. Originally published on Quora.
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