Disclaimer: The following case study is illustrative of the work completed at Northrop Grumman. They outline how the goals and job of a UX Researcher have been accomplished. The process, results, and outcomes are all based on real situations; however, the scenario, data, and application have all been adjusted to be publicly consumable.
Business to Business: End User Focused
Scenario:
Thunder LLC has been contacted by Hospital Zep with a request to update Hospital Zep’s Oncology Wing. Thunder LLC has accepted this request and has begun work on the plans for the update. The update will be known as Solution Storm Cloud. Within Solution Storm Cloud are several projects, such as Project Rain Drop, which encompasses the effort to update and create new nurse interfaces. The initial research of Project Rain Drop, identified the following critical updates;
Improve nurse-to-nurse communication during shift changeover
Improve situational awareness of medication stock
Enable simplified scheduling of patient procedures.
These updates would be implemented while retaining the following capabilities.
View patient information pages
View fellow nurse schedules
A contact list separated by internal and external numbers
These tasks for Project Rain Drop were broken up among the UX Team, with each member focusing on a specific update. However, those team members will work collaboratively to ensure consistency throughout the interfaces across Project Rain Drop.
Solution Storm Cloud is being developed in an Agile environment where multiple stakeholders are working in tandem. This includes the software developers who will be creating the code or other UX team members who are focusing on other aspects of Project Rain Drop. In addition, there are other teams internal to Thunder LLC who have their own requirements for Solution Storm Cloud. These requirements may be based on medical regulations, security, or health and safety. Final stakeholders include Hospital Zep, who will be buying Solution Storm Cloud, and the nurses who will be using portions like Project Rain Drop in their day-to-day operations.
Case Study 3: Preventing Requirements from Causing Adverse Effects on Users
Background:
While working with the software team on Project Rain Drop, a requirement, defined by a hardware safety team, was brought up. The software team explained there will be a need for the Project Rain Drop to implement an alarm every time someone accesses an access port. This was immediately concerning because Nurse’s accessing the access port every time a patient is administered medication. This requirement would mean an alarm would trigger every time a nurse is completing a daily task. The association of an alarm to a daily task could cause the “cry wolf affect” to occur.
Objective:
Research the origin of this requirement to better understand the intention of the requirement. Use this understanding to determine the best path forward; ensuring the intent of the requirement is being met in a way that does not cause further issues for the user.
Method:
Meet with the hardware safety team to determine the intent of the requirement and provide context as to why this could lead for unintended issues.
Determine alternative ways to meet the requirements intent without causing unintended consequences.
Bring alternative requirements and solutions to the hardware safety team for feedback and potential implementation.
Results
Requirement Intent
Nosocomial infections can occur when an access port is left exposed. These infections cost hospitals billions of dollars annually. This requirement’s intent is to aid in reducing the number of nosocomial infections that occur by alerting the nurses when a port is accessed.
The cry wolf effect was explained to the Hardware safety team. Specifically, the potential effect of the Cry Wolf Effect on the frequency of nosocomial infections. There is the potential for the frequency to not change or increase due to the nurses not recognizing the alarm as an actual issue that needs to be fixed.
Alternative solutions
The alarm should not be provided when the port is initially accessed. Based on the intent of the requirement there needs to be a definition as to when the port has been left exposed for too long.
Request to alter the requirement so there is a defined time frame the port can be left open. This will prevent the cry wolf affect and while also adding the advantage of indicating to the nurse if the access port needs to be re-sanitized even if they are still actively giving medication.
Conclusion
After explaining the adverse effects of the requirement’s current verbiage, the new ask and positive outcome were presented to the hardware safety team. They agreed that the intent of the requirement was not being met by the way it was currently worded. There was discussion of utilizing the current protocols nurse’s have pertaining to sanitization to add further definition to the requirement. Once the requirement verbiage is adjusted the hardware safety team will send the new requirement to the UX team for feedback and situational awareness. Once the requirement’s verbiage is re-solidified the UX team will review the best way to implement the need into Project Rain Drop.