The WAZE app tragedy, where an elderly couple was planning to visit their daughter, led to an unsafe street because there were multiple streets similar to the one they intended to go to. Consequently, they ended up losing their lives, which can be attributed to a fault in the UI design.
Designers function to bring things that don’t exist into existence, yet sometimes matched with the maxim, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken,” could be a line of thought to adhere to, especially when relating to standard usability performance. Usability, as it appears as an intangible concept, has an impact.
A designer aspires to create a system, and when they do, a new artifact, along with a new system of practices, emerges. We live in a time when bank transactions are the norm, but there was a time when getting money from the bank meant making a schedule for the day.
In the mid 1970s, in New York, before the ATM was introduced, people had to conform to bank time, which was between 9 am to 3 pm on weekdays or on Saturday mornings. When the first early ATMs were introduced, it allowed users to withdraw money at their convenience, but it came attached with certain conditions, which included not returning the ATM card.
There was a fail-safe mechanism in place which, entering the wrong pin, withdrawing more than what was allowed, or exceeding the limit of what you had in your account, the ATM would eat the card. This did not have the best outcome for the bank because most customers were frustrated with the overall process that involved going back to the bank and simply opted to close the account.
There was a new ATM usability lesson learned from this scenario, with an improvement that introduced an ATM that allowed users to dip their card and have it to be returned. This was hugely successful that it even led to a new branding of the bank company and its motto The Citi never sleeps: Citibank.
In the health care setting, there is a large amount of information that has to be managed and organized. How can the user interface be designed in a way where the complexity can be accounted for with clear outcomes?
An example of where these values of design can function is in a medical device interface. The user who performs must be provided with clear mappings and feedback in order to recognize the accorded action from a context of action from the use of the medical equipment. How can we design for better mapping that puts control over usability while maintaining control? Could there be a way to minimize the conditions of error occurrence, with visible mapping to inform the user to clarify if the action should be taken?
A design system that prevents errors would be a vital characteristic in medical equipment or health informatics. Usability in the design of the system can minimize the complexity and unpredictability of conditions encountered in the healthcare space.