Veterans Health Administration

Human Factors Engineering

UX/HCD Guide for

Clinical Application Coordinators

Business Strategy &

Competitive Analysis

IDIA 630 | Group 3:

Leo Buser, Pranita Deshpande, Owen O’Malley

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Agenda - March 2, 2021

• Introduction and Background
• Personas
• Competitive Analysis
• Summary and Recommendations

Introduction and Background

UX/HCD Guide for CACs

This UX/HCD Guide is being developed as an internal website for Clinical Application Coordinators (CACs) working for the Veterans Health Administration (VA). The finished guide will be training and reference resource for CACs looking to better understand the fundamentals of Human-Centered Design (HCD), and how to apply various HCD methods and approaches to their role within the VA.

Clinical Application Coordinator Role

A.k.a. “Health Informatics Specialist,” “Clinical Applications Specialist”

• “Assesses, plans, implements, and evaluates computer applications for clinical services, administration, education, and patient care.” (VA.gov job posting)
• “Responsible for providing support on the daily interface between clinicians [and medical] staff and the Electronic Medical Records” (IHS.gov job posting)
• Hybrid clinical, administrative, and IT role

Website Goals

The immediate goals of this guide are:

• Empower CACs to improve the value of the products and services they deliver to clinicians
• Provide a reference for CACs looking to fold UX concepts into their regular value delivery
• Help CACs better center the needs and goals of VHA clinicians in the design and development of clinical workflows, reporting and notation templates, and other processes related to the administration of electronic health records (EHRs)

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The longer-term goals of this project are:

• Improve service delivery metrics for clinicians (e.g. reduction in notetaking time; reductions in clinical errors)
• Increase job satisfaction for clinicians and reduce turnover
• Improve outcomes for veterans who utilize the health services of the VA

Website Roadmap

Development Milestones

• Initial Content Development
• Methods
• Toolkits

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• Sharepoint Deployment
• Folder hierarchy
• “MVP” (Minimally Viable Product) version of guide
• Use to validate IA/Organic discovery

• HTML Intranet SIte
• Incorporate learnings from Sharepoint Deployment

Personas

Simone Burton

I want to help Veterans and I’m hoping that UX will get me on the right path.

Motivators

• Simone’s grandfather is a verteran, wants to make a positive impact.
• She loves to learn, and UX is a key to improving the veteran’s experience

Goal

• Wants to inspire others to work for the VA and help shine light on areas that need help

Pain Points

• Doesn’t know where to start with UX content,
• Boss doesn’t have any UX experience, needs help demonstrating change
• She wants to connect with other CACs but doesn’t know how to.

Habits

• Trying out softwares for notebooks to help keep her organized, not satisfied yet.
• She makes time for meditation breaks, getting up from the desk and doing stretches

Age 31

Location St. Louis, MO

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Job Title New CAC

VA Employee 2 Months

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Prior Work Admin Asst.

Education Healthcare

Observant

Organized UX Expert

Unobservant

Unorganized

UX Novice

👁

💡

📂

About

• Simone got her bachelor’s degree in Healthcare Administration and when to work for a Hospital.
• She became an Admin Assistant at the memory clinic then got her masters in informatics part time.

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Ben Honeydew

I feel like our team is already doing UX. . . we just don’t call it that.

About

• Started out working in Radiology in Medical Records, but really enjoyed the informatics aspect of the job.
• Made a lateral move to IT helpdesk and eventually worked his way up to Clinical Applications role.
• Has deuteranomaly (common red-green colorblindness).

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Habits

• Loves going camping with family when he can; “nice to get away from the screens on the weekends.”

Motivators

• Because of experience with colorblindness, knows how much of a difference UX can make in people’s lives. Wants to help his team understand this.

Goal

• Make others aware of accessibility issues and how they impact everyone from clinicians to the veterans served by the VA.

Pain Points

• “UX” is very “buzzy” – doesn’t know that people using is and related terms always mean the same thing
• Rest of team feels like “UX” is a directive from management with no real value
• Can be hard to sell clinical managers on changes he sees as beneficial
• Lack of unified direction on team

Observant

Organized UX Expert

Unobservant

Unorganized

UX Novice

👁

💡

📂

Age 38

Location Boston, MA

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Job Title Experienced CAC

VA Employee 5 years

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Prior Work Radiology

Education Healthcare

Monica Brown

I'm an enthusiast – I enjoy getting other people excited about the power of UX.

About

• Monica recently joined as a Human Factors Engineer at VA.
• Her day-to-day duties include user research, conducting interviews of CACs and others at VA to collect information on their requirements and challenges with the technology.

Habits

• Due to her curious mind she always likes to research with regards to HCD as to why certain technology works and sometimes it doesn’t
• After office hours always spends quality time with her four-year-old

Motivators

• She finds motivation in handling and solving complex problems related to human interaction with technology

Goal

• Provide tools and training to the CACs to improve the value of the products and services they deliver to VA

Pain Points

• Sometimes she finds it difficult to convince and persuade the benefits of HCD methods to CACs
• Due to CACs busy schedule and unavailability, she usually has to conduct multiple training sessions

Age 32

Location New York, NY

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Job Title HFE

VA Employee 6 Months

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Prior Work User Researcher

Education Psychology

Observant

Organized UX Expert

Unobservant

Unorganized

UX Novice

👁

📂

💡

Competitive Analysis

Veteran’s Health Associations – Human Factors Engineering

About

The Human Factors Engineering (HFE) team works across VHA divisions to improve the efficacy of service delivery. HFE’s stated mission is to “improve patient safety by applying what is known about human capabilities and limitations when evaluating products or processes.”

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Strengths

• HFE can create bespoke UX resources tailored specifically to the needs of their employees and greater VA mission
• Very short feedback loop between HFE content managers and CACs

Threats

• Lots of free- or cheap-to-access UX resources online, from eLearning platforms to blogs to YouTube
• Guide has been slow to implement so far, scaled back to Sharepoint implementation vs HTML website – risk of project abandonment?

Weaknesses

• HFE does not have the resources to create or maintain an interactive curricula that matches other modern eLearning platforms (LinkedIn, eDx)
• Current content relies on CACs to self-train – when will they find the time?

Opportunities

• Provide links to other websites to fill in content gaps
• Leverage VA intranet to foster community of practice across all VA clinic locations
• Provide regular internal trainings to upskill CACs on UX concepts, direct them to the guide, and generate feedback to iteratively improve both the trainings and the guide content

18F

About

“18F is an office of federal employees within the General Services Administration (GSA) that collaborates with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve how government serves the public through technology.”

Strengths

• Free-to-access (for anyone – gov’t employee or otherwise)
• Primarily written content that’s well-organized into easily-navigable guides coverings variety of interrelated software product development and management concepts
• Written for the internal 18F staff but with federal employees as a general audience in mind
• As 18F provides design services for other government agencies, the guides include case studies of how 18F has applied design methods in real-world situations

Weaknesses

• Though written with federal government employees in mind, still mostly geared toward software product design – might be harder to find content specifically applicable to CACs’s scope of responsibilities
• Primarily written content works best for some learning types, but not all
• Minimal interactivity – it’s literally a digital version of a written guide, not a learning platform
• Some users new to software development and UX might find the content slightly jargony

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LinkedIn Learning

About

“LinkedIn Learning is an American website offering video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative, and business skills.”

Strengths

• Good amount of high-quality, curated content, organized into courses and taught by experienced professionals
• Concepts are organized into courses, which are organized into learning paths – great source of foundational knowledge and for framing an area of practice
• Course completion percentages are tracked, motivating learners to remain engaged
• Offers certificates for course completion which can be added to LinkedIn profile
• Video-driven learning format mixed with downloaded reading materials and quizzes
• Lots of scanning-friendly interface features

Weaknesses

• Some material might be outdated by 5 years or more (though many courses are updated regularly)
• Harder to find one-off content that makes sense outside the context of the larger course
• Most UX content is geared toward software product design – might be harder to find content applicable to CACs’s scope of responsibilities

Nielsen Norman Group

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Strengths

• Lots and lots of free-to access, written and video content
• Mix of foundational conceptual content plus timely, cutting edge blogs-style content written by some premier practitioners in the field, i.e. Don Norman
• Everything from templates to methods to case studies to ideas for application
• Not exclusively written for software product development

Weaknesses

• Content isn’t structured pedagogically
• Content is organized by topic, but can be hard to sort through “beginner” content vs content aimed at intermediate or experienced practitioners (though some beginner content is titled e.g. “Journey Mapping 101”)
• Can be hard to navigate if you aren’t at least passingly familiar with basic UX and design thinking concepts

About

“We are a UX research and consulting firm trusted by leading organizations world-wide to provide reliable guidance on user experience.”

playbookUX.com

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Weaknesses

• The target audience are people who need recruitment, and tests conducted on their behalf, so a CAC wouldn’t ever feel quite at home on this site, since the landing page is not relevant to them.
• No search field in the blog or the video section, so you have to use control find, or look at each entry and determine if that is what you want to learn about.
• Doesn’t have information related to healthcare specifically.

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About

“Allows access to video based feedback. One place for companies to recruit, conduct studies, and analyze results.”

Strengths

• A free blog with a lot of articles and videos tutorials about UX methods and concepts.
• Tells you how many minutes it will take to read the article
• They have keywords superimposed on the thumbnail image
• Consistent style and structure

YouTube

About

“Everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.”

Strengths

• Freely accessible (with ads)
• Lots and lots (and lots) of UX-related content
• VIdeo content is easier to consume for some learning types
• Users can build their own “curriculum” – fill gaps in their knowledge in an organic, exploratory (inductive) way

Weaknesses

• Not all learners prefer video-only
• Without a curated curriculum you don't know what you don't know
• A lot of UX content on YT is lead-generating – ultimately selling a service or product
• Most UX content is geared toward software product design – might be harder to find content applicable to CACs’s scope of responsibilities
• Lots and lots (and lots) of UX-related content
• Quality and rigor of content varies wildly
• Can be difficult to separate the good from the bad

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

SharePoint

• Use folder hierarchy to validate current content and IA
• Understand information scent is hard to convey on this platform
• File naming convention becomes critical for discovery
• Develop a "using this guide" README with guide to folder structure for this iteration

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Intranet Site

• Plan to host recordings of VA HFE UX webinars on future site
• Incorporate competitors’ information scent strategies
• E.g. playbookUX’s article preview design
• Prioritize ease-of-maintenance when vetting CMS

Questions?

Appendix

Usability.gov

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Strengths

• Similar to 18F, primarily written content developed with federal employees in mind as its primary audience

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Weaknesses

• Not easy to navigate
• As soon as you click beyond the home screen it becomes unpleasant to look at

About

“Usability.gov is the leading resource for user experience (UX) best practices and guidelines, serving practitioners and students in the government and private sectors.”

Navigation

Layout

Navigation Layout

The Following tabs represent top-level navigational categories as represented by the "___" folder structure:

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• Home Page (top-level navigation)

• Fundamental Concepts

• User Experience Process

• Methods

• Tutorials

• Resources

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Content indexed under those tabs mostly appear within the "___" folder structure, but some may only appear under the "Teams" folder structure; we have indicated where this is the case.

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The last tab collects project and design process artifacts, i.e. files present in the GitHub structure but not intended for inclusion in the user-facing Guide. The one folder structure excluded from this tab (and the inventory entirely) is the "Prototype" structure, which is empty except for 100+ blank html files.

Card Sorting

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Description: There are three options for card sorting: Open sort, closed sort, and hybrid sort. Open sort is….

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Keywords: Associate, Matching, Categories

Prerequisites: None

Other Locations in Guide: Methods > Understand > Produce