Presentation
MDD15 - From Research to Reality: Effective Strategies for Handing Off Actionable Human Factors Insights
SessionPoster Session 1
DescriptionA critical step in medical device development is the handoff of Human Factors (HF) research insights to downstream Engineering / Design teams and other stakeholders. Failure to properly contextualize these research findings risks critical usability issues going unaddressed, and generally undermines each group’s respective expertise and opportunity to enact positive change. This presentation provides recommendations on how to share Human Factors research with sufficient context to drive accurate and actionable progress - and thus avoid what is colloquially referred to as simply “throwing [research] over the fence” for the next team to interpret.
The multidisciplinary team at EPAM Continuum has developed specific practices to promote actionable handoffs from our Human Factors research to our downstream design and engineering teams. These recommended practices for HF Research teams are summarized below:
1. Ensuring Actionable Root Causes:
Root cause analysis is a powerful tool in Human Factors research. However, failure to communicate root causes to downstream teams can lead to significant issues, ranging from ignoring critical device-related issues to misdirected design efforts. For instance, root causes that place blame on the user or fail to identify an underlying issue with the system’s design do not provide any actionable information to the Engineering / Design teams to solve a problem; e.g., a root cause of “negative transfer” may explain an issue observed, but provides no valuable or actionable insights to drive design solutions. Alternatively, different issues can arise when reported root causes overstep by prescribing a solution to an observed issue instead of focusing on sufficiently describing the nature of the issue for the larger team to address. Best practices to avoid these and other issues in reporting root causes will be discussed, as informed by industry best practices and hands-on experience with the Human Factors and Engineering / Design teams at EPAM Continuum.
2. Collaborative Iterative Testing:
Integrating Engineering / Design teams into the research process helps bridge the gap between research insights and actionable changes by reducing opportunities for miscommunication. One such approach that has proven successful is designing Human Factors studies that include rapid iterative prototype testing, where a physical or digital product design is evaluated by users on the first day, rapidly redesigned based on their feedback, and then evaluated again with new users on the next day, followed by another design iteration. Supported by in-house observation and prototyping labs, this practice allows Engineering / Design teams to collaboratively observe and discuss design-related insights in real-time, reducing typical burdens related to handoff (e.g., reporting, contextualizing results, etc.) while simultaneously streamlining the overall development process, thus yielding an optimized design faster than standard methods. Techniques to help identify and execute these opportunities will be discussed, as informed by the team’s experience.
3. Clearly Prioritizing Findings using HF’s Risk-Based Approach:
Design improvements can often get lost in the exercise of prioritization of research results. For example, while a particular HF study may yield many potentially helpful insights, the mere presence of multiple findings can lead downstream teams to focus their attention in the wrong places or assign priorities without appreciating the full context. However, HF researchers can help prevent these issues by following some specific practices. For example, HF researchers can coach downstream stakeholders on the risk-based prioritization approach followed by Human Factors, particularly on the relative impact of “Critical” versus “Non-Critical” tasks, including the deeper nuance of how Critical tasks include various harm severity categories. With this understanding of task criticality, focus can be placed on design improvements that will eliminate the most severe usability issues that have the potential to cause harm to users. Likewise, HF researchers should take care to highlight high-priority insights related to usability issues whenever possible, even including them in the executive summary of a study report to ensure that critical findings are not lost amongst the noise of other study data.
The above techniques will be discussed in the context of multiple types of HF research, with the goal of helping our audience optimize the realized value of HF research and promote effective collaboration across the medical device development process.
The multidisciplinary team at EPAM Continuum has developed specific practices to promote actionable handoffs from our Human Factors research to our downstream design and engineering teams. These recommended practices for HF Research teams are summarized below:
1. Ensuring Actionable Root Causes:
Root cause analysis is a powerful tool in Human Factors research. However, failure to communicate root causes to downstream teams can lead to significant issues, ranging from ignoring critical device-related issues to misdirected design efforts. For instance, root causes that place blame on the user or fail to identify an underlying issue with the system’s design do not provide any actionable information to the Engineering / Design teams to solve a problem; e.g., a root cause of “negative transfer” may explain an issue observed, but provides no valuable or actionable insights to drive design solutions. Alternatively, different issues can arise when reported root causes overstep by prescribing a solution to an observed issue instead of focusing on sufficiently describing the nature of the issue for the larger team to address. Best practices to avoid these and other issues in reporting root causes will be discussed, as informed by industry best practices and hands-on experience with the Human Factors and Engineering / Design teams at EPAM Continuum.
2. Collaborative Iterative Testing:
Integrating Engineering / Design teams into the research process helps bridge the gap between research insights and actionable changes by reducing opportunities for miscommunication. One such approach that has proven successful is designing Human Factors studies that include rapid iterative prototype testing, where a physical or digital product design is evaluated by users on the first day, rapidly redesigned based on their feedback, and then evaluated again with new users on the next day, followed by another design iteration. Supported by in-house observation and prototyping labs, this practice allows Engineering / Design teams to collaboratively observe and discuss design-related insights in real-time, reducing typical burdens related to handoff (e.g., reporting, contextualizing results, etc.) while simultaneously streamlining the overall development process, thus yielding an optimized design faster than standard methods. Techniques to help identify and execute these opportunities will be discussed, as informed by the team’s experience.
3. Clearly Prioritizing Findings using HF’s Risk-Based Approach:
Design improvements can often get lost in the exercise of prioritization of research results. For example, while a particular HF study may yield many potentially helpful insights, the mere presence of multiple findings can lead downstream teams to focus their attention in the wrong places or assign priorities without appreciating the full context. However, HF researchers can help prevent these issues by following some specific practices. For example, HF researchers can coach downstream stakeholders on the risk-based prioritization approach followed by Human Factors, particularly on the relative impact of “Critical” versus “Non-Critical” tasks, including the deeper nuance of how Critical tasks include various harm severity categories. With this understanding of task criticality, focus can be placed on design improvements that will eliminate the most severe usability issues that have the potential to cause harm to users. Likewise, HF researchers should take care to highlight high-priority insights related to usability issues whenever possible, even including them in the executive summary of a study report to ensure that critical findings are not lost amongst the noise of other study data.
The above techniques will be discussed in the context of multiple types of HF research, with the goal of helping our audience optimize the realized value of HF research and promote effective collaboration across the medical device development process.
Event Type
Poster Presentation
TimeMonday, March 314:45pm - 6:15pm EDT
LocationFrontenac Foyer
Digital Health (DH)
Simulation and Education (SE)
Hospital Environments (HE)
Medical and Drug Delivery Devices (MDD)
Patient Safety and Research Initiatives (PS)