Leveraging simulation for usability engineering of medical devices

Ease of use and intuitiveness of the medical device reduces use errors that lead to hazardous situations. To improve the above-mentioned factors, the user interface must be designed based on an analysis of observations, interviews, and heuristic evaluations. These activities are carried out in usability testing. Thus, usability testing assumes higher significance. Conducting usability testing during the initial stages of the device development can identify use errors and improve ease of use of the medical device at an early stage. Altering the design in the later stages might be costly, and hence, usability testing during initial stages reduces the number of changes to be made in the later stages of device development. Usability testing in early stages can be carried out on software platforms. One such platform is NI LabVIEW. In this paper, usability testing of five medical devices is conducted on NI LabVIEW. This software was used to design selected features of a few medical devices to conduct usability tests. These designs were tested by five participants from various user groups. This exposed the use errors and indicated a need to improve the user interfaces for all the devices in regard to ease of usage. Thus, usability testing in the early stages of the device development reduces the cost of redesigning the user interfaces at a later stage.