user centered design

Verification and validation are two critical elements of product development. One informs the elements of a product’s design, while the other looks at those design elements in the hands of users. Although often used synonymously, these alliterative terms sit on opposite sides of the product development life cycle. Read more

At Design Science, our research most often focuses on the environments of medical professionals—ORs, cath labs, clinics. Yet some of the most rewarding research I have conducted here has involved visiting patients’ homes. Accompanied by a videographer, I’ve traveled past cornfields and baseball diamonds to meet families that are coping with serious conditions and investigate how they are wielding. Read more

Human behavior can be hard to predict and even harder to explain. Study participants will often manage to do similar things in different ways, and they’ll rarely work with the same tools with equal proficiency. Read more

While Design Science is most well known for its experience in conducting ethnographic research at medical facilities, a growing number of our projects provide opportunities for us to venture outside of the hospital and apply our methodologies to the study of non-medical products. As a field researcher I have had the chance to participate in a number of “unconventional” projects that took me to. Read more

On April 15th, the Food and Drug Administration will begin accepting applicants through its new Expedited Access Premarket Approval Application for Unmet Medical Needs for Life Threatening or Irreversibly Debilitating Diseases or Conditions (“Expedited Access PMA” or “EAP”). Read more

What 4 things should app developers, traditional medical device and pharmaceutical companies, and regulators do to accelerate the growth of mHealth?Check out Nicholas Araujo's proposals, featured on Med Device Online's website. Read more

Are you passionate about working collaboratively to make a felt difference in the world? At Design Science we have one mission - fitting products to people. Read more

The landscape of the medical device industry is transforming. As the tide of technological change reshapes how people interact with their devices, human factors engineers face the task of evolving with the industry. Read more

At various events this spring, experts discussed the challenges of how to get and use data captured from digital health devices. Read more

We thought it might be useful to start at the beginning, so to speak, for companies who have not yet adopted a user-centered design approach. Read more