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World Usability Day 2012 - Workshops

Besides the Apple presentation in the previous blog, other presentations were given by people from different companies and consultants on their approach to user centered design. This gave a lot of differnt insights.

After lunch the workshops were planned.

My first one was by the University Twente about participatory design. They developed a tool to facilitate this process by a game. The aim of this game is to include users in exploration and establishment of requirements of products, software or environments which are to be used in complex, activity flow oriented situations.
The case during the workshop was to develop a weight loss app for an insurance company. It was really fun to do and it stimulated the process of discussing by providing a flexible envrironment to start with with predefined roles. The parcipatory workflow design game will be available soon in the UCD Toolbox

The second worshop was about the UCD toolbox itself by Tristan Weevers. The UCD toolbox is to find, learn and apply methods for UCD. Determining the right method from the over twohundred available methods is extremely difficult and the knowledge about these methods is not centrally available but spread over a large amount of sources. The UCD toolbox provides a filter, compare and get info sequence to facilitate this selection process. The filtering process is based on what you are creating, what the goal is and how much resources you have. Based on this a basic comparison is provided of the most usefull tools. After selection of one of the choices more information is provided about the methods including indepth information and possible tweaks. It's not online yet completely but we were able to work with the prototype which really looked great. This will allow easy communication with different stakeholders about usability. Keep an eye on www.ucdtoolbox.com to see when it comes available.

World Usability Day 2012 - Apple design

Visit the conference home page here.

Design in general is discussed in this session by Apple. However, many of these ideas for products can and should also apply to medical devices to ensure adoption and make them more user friendly.

The revival of apple was really started with the iPod which became a more wellknown brand than Apple itself. Now they sold 380 million iPods in 11 year.
1. How to design a good product
I=I2 innovation is iteration on iteration.
Design should not be about the product but about the experience.
I=A2 Innovation is an application.
People want the application not the product itself.

Target your audience! Make the devices not for the 'nerds' but for the regular users. Addressing the right people is really important. Apple design for the 12 o'clock flashers (people that have devices in their home with the clock flashing at 12 o'clock). In Apple the software teams include people from all kind of different people like musicians, etc to make sure what is developed makes sence to 12 o'clock flashers.

Bond with your user!
I=U2 innovation is what a user wants. Don't ask the user but look at what they do. Observe the user to see what they want.

It's not the feature set that counts but it's all about the user experience!

The lock down of IT in organizations causes a second layer of communication where users use devices and tools that are public. Organizations need to allow BYOD because if they don't they will lose their best people because they want to have the possiblities available. Apple allows organisations to block certain capabilities of their devices in the organizational network, e.g. disable the icloud ability.

The next step in augmented reality

Published at ISMAR conference 2012. This video shows first steps towards a Superman-like X-ray vision where a brain-computer interface (BCI) device and a gaze-tracker are used to allow the user controlling the augmented reality (AR) visualization. A BCI device is integrated into two medical AR systems. To assess the potential of this technology first feedback from medical doctors is gathered. While in this pilot study not the full range of available signals but only electromyographic signals are used, the medical doctors provided very positive feedback on the use of BCI for medical AR.

ESCR 2012: workstation session

Yesterday a workstation session at the ESCR 2012. We choose not to have a face off since that always comes down to comparing quantitative measurements but to have a workstation demonstration.

Three vendors: Siemens, Philips and Circle Cardiovascular Imaging participated in this session. All companies had ample time to present their workstation and show how cardiac cases can be read. Both Siemens and Philips focused on presenting CT while Circle presented MR cases.

It was interesting to see the differences and similarities between the workstations in this well attended session.

A interesting thing was to see that for left ventricular analysis the CT softwares moved to implementing model based approaches while in MR Circle showed a bloodpool approach. Providing both methods and measurement in both modalities might increase the comparability between them for the quantitative analysis.

FlipPad - rugged iPad case for medical use

The FlipPad™ is a new medical grade ruggedized case for the iPad 2 and the new iPad HD. Its is designed to pass tough standards on waterproofing and shock protection. In addition, the whole shape of the FlipPad is easy to clean with standard infection control sprays. The FlipPad™ will be available in with a LasarPen™ which is also waterproof and made of the same durable material.

Check out their website at http://www.flippad.co.uk

Digits: Hands-Free 3-D

A new motion capture gadget from Microsoft Research provides all the control of a 3-D gaming glove. But Digits is a wrist worn sensor that leaves you barehanded and free to touch other objects. With an infrared camera, a MEMS motion sensing chip, and some software trickery it creates a 3-D model of your hand that responds to movements with fingertip precision.

Check it out at IEEE Spectrum
Digits: Hands-Free 3-D

Health Imaging News Portals | Advanced Visualization | 3D virtual reality simulator shows surgical training promise

Health Imaging News Portals | Advanced Visualization | 3D virtual reality simulator shows surgical training promise

Eyes on the phone: iPhone app improves retinal imaging

Eyes on the phone: iPhone app improves retinal imaging

IHE TCE Selector demonstration with Mirc

At the Dutch radiologists days we demonstrated the IHE TCE Selector profile together with a central Mirc server. Besides a KPacs implementation, three companies on the exhibit floor also connected to the server using either the freely available TCE selector or their own implementation (Rogan Delft, Sectra and Alphatron).
It proved to be an easy setup that could be configured quickly with high stability. A lot of interest from the participants in the RSNA Mirc teaching file software with special interest for the implementation of more structural setup of teaching files using RadLex (a radiology lexicon also developed by RSNA).