Google Health

Challenge

Today, healthcare data exists in silos and it can be difficult for healthcare professionals to find the information they need when they need it. Electronic medical records are complex and improving the user experience of those systems is difficult. Google Health wanted to find a way to help healthcare professionals like doctors and nurses find the imformation they need to make decisions in a clear and timely manner. They began with the idea of creating a product that assembles necessary information from various medical record systems in one experience for doctors and nurses.

My involvement

I joined the project on a short-term contract as a User Experience Researcher at the point when the team had a simple interactive prototype. They were mainly focused on the machine learning aspects of the idea when I joined, but were moving in a direction to improve the overall human computer interaction and user experience of the product.

During my time on the project, I improved the process of user testing both low fidelity and high fidelity experieneces with healthcare professionals. Based on my user testing research, I worked closely with a designer to recommend design changes so that the experience would better suit the workflow and minds of healthcare professionals. This type of research focused on: data visualizations, information layouts, navigation, and the framing of information, to name a few examples.

Today

While my time on the project was during the early stages, it is exciting to see how it has evolved into a product that is now known to the world! The product now goes by Care Studio

The challenging part of this role was the process of taking extremely complex medical topics and translating them into visual concept recommendations. Oftentimes, we would approach a topic like medications without any prior knowledge. It was then my job to understand medications in a medical context, what information healthcare professionals need to see, how that information is normally formatted, how it’s visualized, all details that are necessary to show, and then ensure that we presented medications in a way that made sense and would help medical professionals understand their patient. Working with healthcare professionals to understand the best way to present medical data was incredibly fascinating and also the most enjoyable part of this job.

What I learned

Designing medical software is incredibly complex and simplifying that data can have negative impacts on those who rely on the experience for decision making. For users like doctors and nurses who experience information overload and exhaustion while on the job, empathizing with that situation is vital for creating a successful experience. I learned how to validate ideas and run user studies when the stakes are incredibly high. I also learned how innovative products such as this can make a positive impact on lives, if done correctly. Below, you’ll find a video by Google that demonstrates this project.