Zebra Technology
In hospitals, medical equipment is one of the essential parts of efficient patient care.
Finding this equipment is constantly a struggle for nurses that do not have an effective tracking system.
Fall 2022-2023
#Searching for items
#Specialized equipment software design
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Basic Information
Project Team
Time Duration
Utilization Tools
Contribution
Overview
8 UX undergrad students
August 2022 - December 2022
Miro
Figma
Secondary research
User Interview
User Journey map
Value-effort Matrix
Ideation + Sketching
Co-design
Low-fidelity Wireframes
High-fidelity Wireframes
Project Overview
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Background
Medical equipment is one of the most important components of efficient patient care. Finding medical equipment quickly can be difficult for nurses who do not have an effective tracking system.
Hospital equipment needs to be easy to locate to ensure that patients are treated in a timely manner. Some nurses resort to hoarding equipment, which can exacerbate the problem because it makes the equipment unavailable to other nurses.
To solve this problem, our team designed a software.
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Our User Group
The user group for this project consists of hospital staff that cares for patients and the patients themselves.
Nurses are the primary users of the system itself.
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Final Design SectionPeek
Secondary Research
Why do things get lost in hospitals?
What is it like to find items?
How is equipment inventory tracked?
Who puts it back/cleans it after use?
Takeaway:
Before we started conceptualizing, we conducted secondary research and by understanding Zebra's extensive product range, we recognized the relevance of each device and how they would be applied and used in a hospital environment.
And through secondary research, our team gained an initial understanding of the pain points in the experience. Hospitals do not have a common method of operation or guidelines to follow. Practices vary from place to place when it comes to tracking devices. Searching for items was very difficult and ultimately where nurses wasted the most time.
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Research
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Interviews
Nurses often travel between floors, which can increase the chances of misplacing equipment
Nurses "hoard" items in order to obtain specific equipment that is especially needed or best suited for a patient.
The most common action to deal with misplaced or damaged equipment is communication between the nurse and the stockroom manager/maintenance staff.
Takeaway:
After conducting the study, we reached out to users to understand their pain points about their current use of these devices. Ultimately, we interviewed7 healthcare professionals to find out their views on the current internal operational processes in hospitals.
Not having a space where all information is easily accessible
Nurses have trouble keeping track of changes throughout the process
Difficulty for nurses to stay in touch with each other
Takeaway:
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Journey Mapping
By integrating the data collected during the research phase (roles, device mapping, etc.), my team created a visualization tool that depicted the device tracking experience from the nurse's perspective. At each stage of the experience, nurses may encounter pain points and highlights, ambiguous decisions, and uncertainty.
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Co-Design
Learned about their daily work lives and the pain points in their daily routines, which led to identifying areas for improvement.
Learn the details of how nurses deal with missing equipment in different environments and co-conceptualize new solutions.
Takeaway:
After completing the majority of our research, in order to better understand some of our users and gain a first-hand understanding of hospital operations, we held a co-design workshop with a group of Purdue University nursing students who had done clinical placements at northern Indiana hospitals.
Our team conducted this activity with 6 Purdue University nursing students.
Design Iteration
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Ideation Sketch
Trying out the design allows nurses to track the real-time location of mobile and stationary devices via a map.
Design it so they can see which nurse is using the device and ask other nurses about the status of the device by calling them by voice or sending an automated text message.
Takeaway:
After this, our team started the conceptualization phase. Through several sketching sessions, the team conceptualized with freedom and constraints.
