Design

Final Design

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Here we present several screenshots of our final design along with a discussion of our key design decisions along the dimensions of Learnability, Efficiency and Safety. It is important to mention up-front that we designed this interface with the idea of a tablet in mind as we felt that the portability of our user interface would improve it's usefulness to the clinical staff. Throughout this interface, we will demonstrate only the doctor's view. The reason for this is because the nurse's view is a subset of the doctor's view. The difference being that the nurse cannot prescribe medications.

Figure 1: EZ-ICU Main screen. Image Added
General Design Thoughts:
Given the user population and environment we were targeting - busy doctors and nurses in the ICU - we made our user interface as simple and intuitive as possible. It was particularly important to provide a comparable level of learnability and efficiency to what the classical whiteboard provides, without any of the safety pitfalls. Hence, the main screen of our interface was designed to provide clinical staff with an intuitive overview of the patient population and provide strong information scent on how to dig further into individual patient details. As we will discuss further into this section, we incorporated several simple, but informationally dense signifies on the page. 

Usability Considerations:

• Learability
  • When a novice user first interacts with the UI, there is strong information scent that the individuals are clickable.
  • When no patient is selected, there are explicit instructions on the right of the screen informing the user that this action is possible.
  • The add patient button in the top right portion and color differently to enhance learnability
• Efficiency
  • Patients may be sorted by name, by bed, or by the time of their next dose.
  • Off the right of each patient is displayed the time till their next dose, along with a color coded indicator that signifies if a dose is due (red) close to due (orange) or not due yet (green) 
  • The bed number of the patient is displayed prominently to the right of the patient's dosage information.
  • Similar kinds of information are clustered together on the screen. For instance - the number of patients in the ICU is displayed  next to the add patient button. 
• Safety
  • The picture of the patient and bed are placed in proximity to one another, this feature was implemented to help prevent confusion, or mistreatment due to patients with similar names. 

Figure 2: Patient Information view

Image Added

General Design Thoughts:
Once a user clicks on a patient tab, the tab opens to display an expanded set of information about the patient as shown in figure 2 above. This design allows the clinicians to maintain their overview of the breadth of patients in the ICU, even as they are seek more depth on a one specific patient. 

Usability Considerations:

• Learability
  • The tab opens at the overview page to provide information on the current prescriptions, and upcoming administrations needed.
  • Allergy information is highlighted in red, which draws the novice users attention to it.
  • selected tab provides visual feedback by being a different color.
  • When a patient is selected the add-patient button is no longer highlighted in orange.
• Efficiency
  • Detailed patient information is placed in the right hand panel. This allows the clinical staff to read more about the details of a single patient while keeping an eye of the indicators of the entire ICU population.
  • Pertinent information needed for the prescription of new medications, such as patient history, visit information and other medications are clearly listed on the side panel.
  • Summary of current patient vital information is displayed in the summary screen.
• Safety
  • Patient dosage requirements are maintained, even as tab is opened.

Figure 3 A: Prescription Screen Image Added

Figure 3B: Prescription Screen Image Added
General Design Thoughts:

Once a user clicks on a the prescription screen, a general overview of the prescriptions is provided while maintaining at-a-glance information on other patients. Notice that prescriptions may not be edited, only canceled. This is to keep in line with regulations common in US hospitals where doctors issues new prescriptions for any change in medication.

Usability Considerations:

• Learnability
  • Structure of the UI changes minimally as user navigates across patient tabs.
  • There is strong information scent that users can add new prescriptions. 
  • When adding new prescription, frequency is listed in linguistic terms that doctors typically use - every hour, every week, etc. 
  • Text input contained greyed out values communicating what should be inserted.
• Efficiency
  • Summary information on all doses is displayed. 
  • when the start and end portions are clicked, a handy calendar pops us to help with selection of the start and end times. 
  • The medication utilizes auto-complete
• Safety
  • Prescriptions may not be edited, only canceled and reissued with new values or dosing intervals.
  • Accidentally canceled prescriptions may be undone.  

Figure 4A: Administration Screen  Image Added
Figure 4B: Administration Screen: Image Added
General Design Thoughts:
Once a user clicks on a the administration screen, a list of time ordered dosages which need to be administered are shown. simply click the "done" button to verify that the dose has been given, and the user interface updates accordingly.

Usability Considerations:

• Learnability
  • When the user clicks done - there is immediate visual feedback telling the user when the dose was given and the dosage indicator in this case went from red to green
• Safety
  • Accidentally clicked  administrations may easily be undone.  

Important Design Decisions

Here we discuss design decisions we made which were motivated by the three evaluations we did

Paper Prototyping

*Issue 1:*Users couldn't see patient allergy information when prescribing new medication
Design Fix: Make patient information sidebar visible at all times, providing consistency and context

*Issue 2: *Users were confused by "Add Medication" button while performing the nurse task
Design Fix: Make the Overview screen role-dependent, and switch "Add Medication" to Administer Tab with simple indicators.

*Issue 3: *Users were unsure of the input format for "Frequency", "Start", and "End"
Design Fix: Provide richer controls to alleviate formatting issues: a drop-down for Frequency, and a date-time picker for Start and End

*Issue 4: *Users found the alert icons ambiguous.
Design Fix: Added text indicators along with the alert icons.

Issue 5: The prescribe medication was a pop-up menu which users found annoying as it blocked parts of the screen they wanted to observe - such as patient information.
Design Fix: We eliminated the pop-up and placed the prescribe portion within the main pane of the interface. 

Heuristic Evaluation

Issue 1: Users could not sort patients by those needing the next dosage.
Design Fix: We added this functionality into the UI

Issue 2: Our color indicators and accompany test were confusing users of the interface. The interface used to display a red indicator and say how many minutes ago the dose was due. users were confused about weather the "ago" referred to their own administration, or what was due.
Design Fix: 

User Testing

Considered Design Alternatives

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