How users shape product design at Accurx
Making the most of insight opportunities
Lead Product Designer Andrew Clark outlines three things Accurx does to root product design in the insights of users.
At Accurx, we create easy-to-use software to help healthcare teams and patients communicate with one another. To do this effectively, we practice human-centred design that’s simple and intuitive.
Naturally, as a Product Designer, this means spending lots of time on research calls, listening to what users have to say about your designs and offering potential solutions for them to feed back on.
Harnessing these insights helps make sure that any Accurx product serves users the best it possibly can. But when it comes to maximising user input, this is just the start. So here are three additional ways we turn user insight into human-centred product design at Accurx:
3 things we do to root product design in user insights
1. User support shifts
What we do: Like everyone at Accurx, Product Designers cover a user support shift for three hours every six weeks. This means joining our brilliant User Support team to answer real-time queries from users via our live-chat and email inbox. Queries can be about everything from inviting people to their COVID-19 vaccination(s) to a question about how to send a patient an SMS.
Why we do it: This gives us a candid, unfiltered perspective from users about what they’re finding difficult in our software. Often during product development, it’s easy (and more comfortable!) to concentrate on what went well. But hearing about what users struggle with sets the benchmark for the level of clarity, performance and ease of experience that users actually need.
These user support shifts give us the opportunity to learn about areas of a product that might not be our main focus and make sure every feature is working well. They’re also really useful in throwing up genuine use-cases and potential work-arounds that users find for themselves, and which we might not have anticipated when designing a product.
2. Field visits
What we do: Every couple of months, we visit healthcare centres such as GP practices or hospitals to shadow staff as they perform their day-to-day tasks. While there, we exchange questions about their use of Accurx products as well as their general communication needs.
Why we do it: These visits give us invaluable insight into the on-the-ground, situational factors which influence the use of our products. Being in a GP practice, hospital or community health care setting lets us experience the noise, the busyness, the lack of hardware, the bad WiFi and everything else that can prevent our products being used as we might imagine.
In the controlled environment of a user research call, potential users might lack the distractions and time-pressures that might otherwise prevent them from getting the most out of our products. But in a different context — say a GP consultation room — motivation can change and new restrictions to use can emerge. Seeing these environmental barriers in context is crucial in informing the design decisions that we take.
3. Collaborating with in-house clinical leads
What we do: In our product teams, we work alongside practicing healthcare professionals — GPs and doctors who still perform clinical roles every week, when they’re not at Accurx. We keep in constant collaboration with these in-house clinical leads to integrate their insights into our product design.
Why we do it: Our in-house clinical leads keep us connected to the perspective of our users. In the product development world, new questions and hypotheses come up all the time. On top of this, organising research calls or site visits to get answers can be time consuming. But having in-house clinical leads just a few desks — or a Slack message — away, helps us to work faster.
It also helps us to think deeper. The key to product innovation is often to keep asking why, and to understand more about the motivations behind certain behaviours. Because we have such strong working relationships with our clinical leads — they’re not just colleagues but friends we have lunch or a pint with — we can talk about design challenges in far more detail than user interviews and shorter interactions often allow.
Designing for better communication in healthcare
While these things only really scratch the surface about user input at Accurx, they’re key parts of how we stay close to what healthcare professionals think and feel as they use our products. The Product Design team doesn’t do this alone, but alongside both Accurx’s incredible User Research team, who lead on user input, and healthcare staff kind enough to give up their time for us.
The aim? To design a software platform that delivers better communication in healthcare and ultimately makes staff happier, and patients healthier.
Interested in becoming a Product Designer at Accurx and being a part of our mission? Good news — we’re beginning the new year on the look out for brilliant Product Designers. Head to our careers page for our current roles!
