Human Factors & UX Studies

Increasingly, regulatory authorities encourage and sometimes demand, that manufacturers develop their products with users at the centre of the design and evaluation process to create safer medical drug delivery devices, medical devices and consumer products.

At Medicys, we help human factors engineers and usability researchers observe and analyse their product users, be they patients, caregivers, consumers or healthcare professionals and facilitate studies such as:

Comparative testing studies:

In which respondents are asked to interact with two or more products/devices and assess their strengths and weaknesses, ease of use and key attributes whilst we focus on observing their emotions and use errors.

Formative usability testing studies:

Usually carried out in early development stage to help engineers and developers improve design and specifications by observing respondents’ interactions with the product and analyse their thought process and actions.

Summative human factors testing studies:

In which respondents test the final product so engineers and developers can assess product performance and safety. The objective is to ensure that the whole design, including the Instruction For Use (IFU), any other documents and the training are verified, validated and safe

Instructions For Use (IFU) testing studies:

In which respondents read sections of the instructional material and restate, in their own words, what the sections convey, to determine if their comprehension of the text matches the original intent of the text. Another technique is to ask them to perform tasks, step-by-step, as they read the IFU, to confirm it leads them to perform any task incorrectly, or to omit tasks.

In-Home Usage Testing (IHUT)

Which represents an effective way to test products with consumers before moving forward with a full-fledged product launch. Products are securely shipped for participants to use at home and their feedback can be gathered in a variety of ways: follow-up telephone survey, online survey or even in person. Products are tested in users own environments rather than in an artificial test environment, resulting in a more realistic outcomes on product satisfaction, usage, and potential improvement areas.