UI/UX Considerations for Healthcare Applications

We spend a lot of time online reading news, navigating websites and using web apps. In some cases, our experience online is not the best that we could have due to poor design that didn’t take user experience into consideration.

Here are some best practices for UI/UX.

1. Design Should Concentrate on User Experience

Making the website experience memorable is more important than what the website says. Users often forget the data and salient points of content but they will remember how it made them feel. It works in advertisements, why not use it on web content?

Graphics, layout, text and interactive elements work in synergy to present the user with an experience, not just present them with information. UX design is a consequential piece of application and web work.

Making the page/app stand out from the sheer quantity of websites and information on the internet is essential. Modern websites contain more visual and interactive qualities to strike at more emotional responses to help them stand out in a highly competitive world.

2. Users Want Clarity and Simplicity

In half of a second, users evaluate the design of a website/app, so you need to decide what you want users to do and make it apparent. Don’t make it difficult to find action buttons. Visually focus attention on the main button versus a bunch of buttons on the home page.

Constantly reconsider what your app or site can do to make it easier to use. Part of the design is making it highly usable for the majority of users and allowing for extra functionality to be hidden and made discoverable as it is needed, not shown all at once.

Also providing a clear, consistent design is simpler for users. They can then know what to expect when you are reusing colors, behaviors and aesthetics which reduces the need for them to figure out the interface. When users are familiar with some of the aspects of the design, it makes the process clearer and easier to use.

3. Common Design Elements Versus Creativity

When design elements are common elsewhere, don’t reinvent them by becoming creative with new UI patterns. Making users think too hard to figure out your UI interface is not what you want. You want to have a familiar-looking interface where standard objects like links stand out as links and login access is located in the upper right. There is no need to relocate such standardized components.

Creativity with standardized patterns can make your interface hard to work with and not promote usability. Although you may think non-traditional is cool, it may make it harder for users to navigate and thus it falls into a problem area. Creativity and usability need to have a balance.

URLs, buttons, and navigation placement need to focus on usability before design. It is best to focus on the layout of these first without the design in mind, then add the creative elements.

4. Know the Audience

You must have a good idea of who the audience is for the intended website or app before you create it. How to best design the interface will come from them.

Once you have a clear idea of the audience for your website or app, you can then find out their needs and wants, and make the perfect design that will meet their desires. The competition can show you some ideas on how this was done. Note the competition’s colors, layout, style and features.

When you use styles and designs that your audience is already comfortable with, they can be eased into your site. You can then differentiate yourself with your ideas on their needs.

When you’ve identified your audience, remember to incorporate their feedback into your design. Considering the end user’s actionable feedback is significantly valuable.

5. Visual Hierarchy

When putting the most important elements on the interface, highlight them so that users focus on them. In design, there are a lot of ways to highlight things, but the most effective is to make it larger than anything else on the screen.

Making something a focal point by making it larger than anything else is how several websites achieve the impossible to ignore highlighting of sales or ‘click here’ buttons.

6. User Experience Qualities

At the core of UX is to make sure that users find value in what you are providing. For a meaningful experience, the information should be:

• Useful - Content should be original and fulfill a need.
• Usable - Site/App must be easy to find and use.
• Desirable - Design elements bring emotion and appreciation.
• Accessible - Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities.
• Credible - Users must believe and trust what you tell them.
• Be human - Be trustworthy, transparent, and approachable with human interaction preferred over machine interaction.
• Be learnable - Be sure that interaction is easy and moving through the product is seamless.
• Be efficient - Be sure that on subsequent visits, users can accomplish their goals quickly and easily.
• Be delightful - Be sure that the product delights users so that they have an emotional connection to it and champion your product.
• Be a performer - Be sure that the system performs well when users are interacting with it.

Must consider features:

• Consumer-focused design and personalized experiences in healthcare.
• Voice User Interfaces.
• AI and Chatbots.

Conclusion:

The future of healthcare is being driven by developments in mobile technology. By next year, the CAGR of the mobile health industry is supposed to be around 41%. With more demand for efficient, user-friendly and reliable medical applications, it is now the right time to invest your means in health app development and design future-forward solutions.