Test and Refine

Once a product has been prototyped it is important that it is rigorously tested and evaluated prior to going into production to ensure that it can accomplish the task it is designed to perform. This process is a refining process, as in most cases, multiple versions need to be developed to improve performance, reliability, and repeatability. Within this phase there are a number of human factors methods that can help identify potential errors and usability concerns, including cognitive walkthroughs, heuristic evaluations, usability studies, user experience evaluations, and ‘in the wild’ testing. Cognitive walkthroughs and heuristic evaluations are expert evaluations, meaning, they are conducted by human factors experts within the domain of healthcare to provide feedback and solutions for potential user errors. Usability, user experience, and ‘in the wild’ evaluations allow for evaluation on the user’s ability to perform tasks and understand if the healthcare product is usable, useful, and safe to the user as well as satisfying. The test and refine stage is an iterative phase, allowing for changes in the design to continue until the new technology meets the user’s needs.

In this section each of the test and refine methods are expanded upon, highlighting what the method is, and why, when, and how they can be used.