November 5th, 2007
Healthcare focus of World Usability Day
Thursday is World Usability Day!
Never heard of it? It’s a corporate-powered set of events meant to “put people at the center of usability.”
The nearest event to my Atlanta home is a four-hour Charlotte trade fair, with seven booths, sponsored by some company called BellSouth. (Wonder if the sponsorship survived their absorption by AT&T?)
Oh, and this year the focus is on healthcare.
So the question occurs what could lead to greater usability in healthcare products? Please, chime in below.
Personally I think we should start with business models which value usability. If usability made you more profitable, people would build it in.
It’s true that in many areas of technology this doesn’t happen. People prefer to have a lot of features, until they get products home. Then they find themselves either searching for a way to get things done, or finding one way that works, and wishing all the other ways of getting something done would just go away.
This has long bedeviled the makers of mobile devices. People say they want plain phones, but then they buy the ones with all the bells and whistles, and the buttons so small your fingers can’t find them.
Healthcare includes many different types of markets, so usability has a different priority depending on the buyer. You want a simple robotic surgeon? I didn’t think so. But you do want a simple blood pressure monitor.
The usability channel expands when you consider disability. Think it’s tough keeping yourself from throwing something against the wall because of your ADHD? Try it without arms or legs, or blind or deaf.
But this is where I find the most hope. Those with disabilities place an absolute premium on usability. They can either use something or it is useless. I think we need to learn from them, apply their lessons to broader consumer markets, and start making their priority on usability our priority.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
