The customer

’s Heeren Loo healthgroup has over 13.000 employees spread over multiple regions in The Netherlands. The healthgroup focus on caring for mentally deficient clients that live in ’s Heeren Loo established villages.

The Problem

The employees need to keep track of the clients health and submit information in the ECD (electronic client dossier) at a local PC that is not available at the clients place. Working on paper and submitting the information later in a PC is time consuming, To work more efficient the healthgroup is testing to work on iPads, but the software isn’t compatible based on functionality and usability. ’s Heeren Loo hired me as a mobile (UX) expert to improve the software and communicate the issues with the suppliers.

The Challenge

One of the challenges was to track all usability issues and report them to the software supplier. This required interviews and a lot of usability testing. The software suppliers ignored the mobile first approach for years and didn’t test their software on newer iOS versions. Also, the iPad was new for the healthgroup and their employees.

The solution

As the mobile (web) apps required to run on an iPad I used my experience with the Apple User Interface Guidelines and translated them with the supplied software. Manuals where made for end users and issues where reported to the software suppliers. To empower the communication with the software supplier, I recorded video’s / made screenshots and supplied (even code based) solutions.

Reflection

Working in healthcare requires a different approach of usability. The end users aren’t familiar with working with software or the iOS ecosystem. Translating the wishes from the employees towards the software supplier took a lot of effort and energy but eventually the software was improved and users are now able to use the iPad during their daily work.