UX of le Grill

After a sleepless night, I decided to give up on trying to make it to the land of nod and get up and do some work. After a few hours I decided it was breakfast time, and I could have a nice cooked breakfast before heading to work. Being in the new house, I was working with an oven I'd never come across. I decided to grill an English muffin and upon looking at the nob on the oven it was not evident at all what symbol was what. I clicked them around a bit, putting my hand in the oven to see what was on and no luck. I ended up having to get out the oven instructions (quoting The Simpsons "le grill - what the hell is that!") and decode what the funny symbols were meant to be. 

Iconography is difficult. This is why we need to user test! 

UX of Everyday Things Series

Just a quick note to formally acknowledge my "UX of Everyday Devices/Things" themed posts are, of course, inspirited by the great Donald (Don) Norman and his influential book published in 1988: The Design of Everyday Things (DOET) (then the Psychology of Everyday Things POET). 

This book is the cornerstone of my UX journey; it was this that sparked my passion and made me realise other people were not only frustrated by the design of every day things, but were working to understand and change the way that people interact with technology and objects.

These posts are my experience, interpretation and observations of the UX of Everyday Things (UETS) and will be an ongoing theme I write about.  

My much loved copy of DOET

UX of Everyday Things - Ultrasounds

Today I has an ultrasound; nothing serious or exciting to report, other than my UX observations. 

The machine used was a Phillips xMatrix not dissimilar to the device pictured, taken from  www.jakenmedical.com. 

http://www.jakenmedical.com/philips-echocardiography-ultrasound-systems-machines-devices/

Being a UX designer, while trying to take my mind off the procedure, I was studying the buttons and making mental notes about how the operator knew just what to do with these seemingly randomly placed, and unlabelled, buttons and how much training he must have had. This confusing interface lives in an environment where mistakes must be eliminated. 

As he was operating the machine I noted the positives of his experience. The machine enabled him to attach different sized sensors, with long cables to reach the patient (i.e me) without dislodging from the ports. The machine is "easily" operated with one hand, while the other is used to manipulator the sensors over the patients body. 

I was thinking how well everything was going, all about the UX when I experienced the bad UX I thought such a confusing design afforded - the operator had been entering the wrong labels on the images, and there was no way for the system to go back and change the label to what the organ really was. He then had to delete said images, and redo those parts of the ultrasound, giving me a prolonged ultrasound and a negative experience for all.

My 20 minute ethnography was insightful, it would be an interesting exercise to redesign these machines to improve the UX for both patient and operator.