PageWriter Cardiograph

User interface design to support a new family of cardigraph products.

COMPANY
Philips Medical Systems, Philips Design, Andover, MA

ROLE
User Interface Designer, working closely with the product manager. My focus was creative direction and interaction design, and worked closely with a visual designer on the product identity.

PROBLEM
The project focused on the redesign of the existing touch screen user interface for a new cardiograph product family. The primary objective was to a create a simple intuitive user interface that would speed up keys tasks, could scale to fit three different monitor sizes, and align with the Philips brand and IntelliVue product family.

Existing cardiograph hardware and software

PROCESS
The project began with an analysis of the existing product and findings from user interviews, in order to define the project and design requirements. Wireframe flows were created for each task, to explore different interaction models. The models were iterated and refined to one direction with the client and clinical specialists. Product identity concepts explored branding, user interface components, and opportunities to integrate with the hardware.

Once the visual and interaction design direction was roughly defined, a prototype was created for evaluation by the team and customers. The design was iterated over a few rounds of prototype development, until the user interface was finalized. Final icons, user interface components, and screens were specified; along with the prototype for the interaction design specifications.

High fidelity prototype for user testing and interaction specifications

RESULTS
Aligned with similar Philips Healthcare products, the software identity was integrated with the hardware design, by using similar colors and behavior for the hard keys and software controls for more holistic user interface.

The user interface could easily scale to multiple monitor sizes, to support different product family offerings. The visual language is clean and simple, with key functions highlighted. The main menu was simplified from 15 to 8 functions; and emphasizes the main task—creating a ECG report in 3 steps. All other navigation and functions are contextual to the task.

RECOGNITION
PageWriter Cardiographs TC50/TC30 won a 2010 iF product design award.