Guide: Fast & simple user testing for healthcare

Guide: Fast & simple user testing for healthcare

A practical guide for user testing your software, so healthcare workers will love it. The guide is based on 6 years of experience user testing Simple, DHIS2, OpenSRP, and other digital health tools.

Tony Joy

Tony Joy

18-Apr-2024, 2 minute read

Easy to use health software is more likely to be used by health workers and will get you better data for driving program improvements. This practical guide teaches you to conduct user tests to collect unbiased feedback from users and make easy-to-use health software.

Who this guide is for

This user testing guide was made for anyone involved in making or implementing digital health software, not just designers or user researchers.

Why conduct user tests?

  • Software that’s easier to train. Our team has reduced training time on Hypertension management software from 1 day to under 2 hours.

  • Easy for staff to transfer knowledge. Healthcare worker turnover is high in hospitals and clinics. If the software is easy to use, existing staff can train new staff on-the-job without formal training sessions.

  • Gather accurate data. Difficult-to-use software is irregularly used. Or, even worse, inaccurate data is entered into it.

  • Reduce stress for busy hospital staff. Complicated software adds to the stress of overburdened health staff.

  • More on the benefits of simple user-centered software in this playbook published by our team.

Guide

45 min video guide. Get the slide deck

Useful templates and examples

These are templates that we use for conducting user tests and now you can use them too. Please modify the templates for your own needs.

Preparing to conduct a user test

Prototyping

Conducting interviews with healthcare workers

Reporting your learnings

More resources

Quick and dirty user research by Michael Margolis (Video and worksheet)
(Michael’s work at Google Ventures was a major inspiration for this user testing guide)

7 minute user interview sample (Video)

How to help users think out loud (Video)

Simple is the fast, free app for clinicians to manage their patients with high blood pressure and diabetes.

We measured how fast Simple is compared to paper systems.

Digital Health publishes article about Simple in India

Simple was implemented by administering a user-centered approach and agile techniques. The authors explain how we did this.

Daniel Burka

Daniel Burka

17-Jul-2024, 4 minute read
Hearts 360: A gold-standard dashboard for hypertension and diabetes programs

HEARTS360: A gold-standard dashboard for hypertension and diabetes programs

Highly effective dashboards designed for managing hypertension and diabetes programs at scale, based on WHO standard indicators.

Jamie Carter

Jamie Carter

11-Apr-2024, 3 minute read