Case Study Part 2: Human Factors Engineering

Welcome to part two of our Case Study series. We are discussing the benefits of utilizing FHIR to help support a Healthcare organization in making decisions based on contract proposals. This blog will focus on how GigaTECH incorporates different tenets of Human Factors Engineering and how those provide us the ability to craft a prototype that captures the full picture of a customer idea. In our introduction, we discussed that our Business Development team needed a new way of gathering and compiling contract information in a more user-friendly manner. The existing tool is burdensome to navigate and convoluted to enter and understand the data. The new employee and contract dashboards seek to alleviate these pain points, and we’ll discuss here how we identified the issues and worked with our Business Development team to devise a viable solution.

What is GLEAM?

GLEAM stands for GigaTECH Lean Enterprise Agile Management and is our internal methodology for delivering quality and consistent solutions. There are five main points of the GLEAM methodology:

• Plan– Identify the essential needs of our customers and develop a practical strategy to meet those needs effectively.
• Build– Design and produce solutions that create real value for our customers.
• Deploy– Provide and implement our solutions to deliver that value to our customers.
• Monitor– Gather feedback from customers along with data on performance, processes, and business outcomes.
• Learn– Use customer feedback, performance metrics, and lessons from other projects to continuously enhance the value we deliver.

All five pillars rely on consistent customer engagement to ensure alignment on business goals and outcomes. Let’s look at how we incorporate Product Thinking and Human-Centered Design concepts to work through the GLEAM process.

Product Thinking

Product Thinking is a mindset that focuses on understanding and solving problems with the end-user and overall business value in mind. We begin any project by to identifying the problem and clearly defining the desired outcomes. We ask questions designed to understand the problem from the customer’s standpoint and understand the “why” for the solution. With this information, we provide different solutions that will provide value to the customer based on their strategic business goals. Another question we ask is who the target audience. This is important for us to understand so we can provide a solution that is user-centric and accomplishes the business goals while providing positive value to the entire user experience. We asked our Business Development team these questions to gain a better understanding of their desired outcomes. Through this questioning, we understood that a wider range of team members needed access to the information and that the information needed to be quickly read and understood. The current tool was more burdensome and time-consuming than desired, and the new dashboards provide users a much faster synopsis of the information. We incorporate tools such as product roadmaps, user story mapping, and lean or business model canvas throughout the process to help organize vision and goals, define features during prototyping, and identify key business and user metrics.

Human-Centered Design (HCD)

Human-Centered Design is a design philosophy and methodology that places users at the center of the design process. We incorporate three keys to our HCD philosophy: Empathy and User Research, Ideation and Prototyping, and User Testing and Iteration. While product thinking incorporates more tangible outcomes through customer engagement, HCD allows us to better understand the customer’s mindset and how our solution will affect the business.  We employ empathy and user research by engaging the customer in interviews, observations, and surveys. This allows us to identify key pain points and better learn the users’ real needs. Identifying these needs flows into ideation and prototyping, where designers create solutions and prototypes for customer feedback. Prototypes are created using tools such as simple sketches or more complete interactive wireframes. As feedback is received throughout user testing and iteration, designers can make changes and updates quickly and incorporate real-time feedback. While working with the Business Development team, we worked through multiple prototypes. The end goal was to create an intuitive, easy-to-navigate UI that was quickly informative. Prototypes first focused on pulling in the correct information from the current tool. Then, we worked on how to display the information best. This took several rounds of user feedback before we finalized the design. We utilize a variety of tools to support HCD. These include User Research tools for collecting data on user behaviors, preferences, and pain points, Prototyping tools to create wireframes and prototypes to visualize concepts, and Usability Testing tools to conduct remote usability testing, track user behaviors, and collect feedback.

Combining Product Thinking and HCD

Combining our Product Thinking and HCD philosophies grants us the ability to provide a complete business-centric solution. We incorporate not only tangible business metrics and user needs, but also how those solutions will provide long-term value to target audiences and end-users. Consistent customer engagement provides a rapid feedback loop during prototyping and solution testing, informed prioritization of features, and continuous solution improvement. We strive to provide not just the best solution but the best solution for the customer! We value communication and know it is the best way to provide service and solutions.

 GLEAM and US Digital Playbook Alignment

Our GLEAM methodology aligns well with the core principles of the US Digital Services Playbook. Our HCD and Product Thinking philosophies are especially applicable to the following plays:  Understand What People Need (play #1), Address the Whole Experience, From Start to Finish (play #3), and Make it Simple and Intuitive (play #5). With our GLEAM methodology, we approach our Business Development team’s problem in a way that incorporates these plays. We asked questions to understand what the team needed in a solution, prototyped a solution from beginning to end, incorporating feedback throughout, and worked to ensure the solution was simple and easy for all players involved. Incorporating our philosophies with the US Digital Services Playbook enables us to better assess contract proposals and write well-devised and concise proposals in step with government requirements.

For a more in-depth look into how GigaTECH addresses software concerns and problem-solving, check out one of our recent white papers.