Presentation
Rethinking IFUs: What Board Game Rulebooks Contribute to IFU Usability
DescriptionMedical device usability testing with health care practitioners consistently underscores that instructions for use (IFUs) go unread by their intended audiences. Career surgeons brag about “in thirty years of practice never once opening an IFU.” Nurses self-report as overworked kinetic learners with neither the access to, nor the time to, pore through an IFU for specific troubleshooting help. In the US, device setup is often the province of Biomedical techs who may be the only ones actually reading IFUs – and even they admit to cutting corners. Solutions to these (and other) problems may come from a seemingly unlikely quarter: recent advances in board game rulebooks. There’s a board gaming renaissance going on, and players seeking rich, complex games face strikingly similar challenges to health care practitioners when it comes to absorbing large amounts of tactical, practical, strategic, and important information. Communicating important information (and lots of it) in the proper order, the proper depth, and with appropriate orientation to the consequences is a learnable skill. In many cases exemplary board game rulebooks beat IFUs hands-down through better use of procedural guidance, step-by-step illustrations, QR codes, symbol libraries, section identification aides, checklists, and more.
Making IFUs suitable for their intended audiences involves reframing IFUs and their vital content from a full-scale repository of information generated by scientists, engineers, marketers, and lawyers into practical aids that health care practitioners will read, value, and insist on keeping close by.
This presentation provides specific breakdowns of challenges from IFU-related trends: lack of use, lack of access, preferences for text-based v. experiential learning, video content, and the realities of referencing IFUs when time is short, tempers are high, and lives are on the line. Case examples of how IFU providers with the best of intentions get in their own way will be shown and proposed solutions will be provided. Solutions will be drawn from decades of UX research conducted at all levels of health care design, development, and delivery, as well as “crunchy” board gaming experiences. Proposed IFU enhancements will include techniques for supporting: rapid use, a variety of learning styles, audience-specific aids, and how to use illustration techniques to best effect. Anyone who has been victimized by a bad instruction manual, or even a good instruction manual unsuited to its use context, will benefit from this presentation.
This is a good-intentioned UX intervention to take IFUs to their next, usable, level.
Making IFUs suitable for their intended audiences involves reframing IFUs and their vital content from a full-scale repository of information generated by scientists, engineers, marketers, and lawyers into practical aids that health care practitioners will read, value, and insist on keeping close by.
This presentation provides specific breakdowns of challenges from IFU-related trends: lack of use, lack of access, preferences for text-based v. experiential learning, video content, and the realities of referencing IFUs when time is short, tempers are high, and lives are on the line. Case examples of how IFU providers with the best of intentions get in their own way will be shown and proposed solutions will be provided. Solutions will be drawn from decades of UX research conducted at all levels of health care design, development, and delivery, as well as “crunchy” board gaming experiences. Proposed IFU enhancements will include techniques for supporting: rapid use, a variety of learning styles, audience-specific aids, and how to use illustration techniques to best effect. Anyone who has been victimized by a bad instruction manual, or even a good instruction manual unsuited to its use context, will benefit from this presentation.
This is a good-intentioned UX intervention to take IFUs to their next, usable, level.
Author
Event Type
Oral Presentations
TimeWednesday, March 258:30am - 8:52am EDT
LocationGramercy
Medical and Drug Delivery Devices