We’ve all been there – downloading a new app to our smartphone and thinking “how did the developers not consider this aspect when designing this? It’s unusable!” These poor experiences have inspired us at uMotif to host regular usability testing sessions with the people using our technology.
One of our core values is putting patients first. When we founded uMotif, we first started working with two people with Parkinson’s Disease to support their healthcare journey by capturing data. This focus on empowering people continues today, including through our product testing sessions. This testing ensures that we design our technology with patients for patients, and also the professionals using our system. It’s a process of ‘human centred design’, which we first learnt from our time on IDEO’s Startup In Residence programme
On a quarterly basis our product team meets with groups of people using our technology – from patients and caregivers, to site administrators and Doctors – exploring new functionality and gathering feedback on how it can be enhanced. These sessions provide a hands-on experience for people to try out new concepts and functionality. Most importantly, we create a regular feedback loop to ensure the patient voice is heard loud and clear, and forms part of upcoming product releases.
Over the years we have found user experience and feedback to be dependent on many factors including as a person’s condition, stage of treatment, home life and daily activities – so we aim to talk to a broad patient population to get a representative view. We also talk to patients of all ages because although we have truly busted the myth that older patients can’t and don’t use smart devices, a person’s age can affect how they interact with technology. For example, the ability to zoom in or increase a font size past a typical recommendation.
We find it incredibly motivating to talk at length with people who can benefit from using our solutions, as well as steering our mission of being the most patient-centric eClinical platform.
If you or you know of someone who would like to take part in a future usability testing session please email us at: contact@umotif.com