Clinicians generally aren’t seeking improved communication technology interfaces. They’re after things that don’t impede the flow of patient care.

I was treating this at the UX design stage of a wearable healthcare comms platform. The system offered hands-free access to comms, alerts, and the real-time coordination of care teams. It seemed like a technology issue, but the design focused on workflows.

As I observed clinicians more, a principle of unobtrusive technology was reinforcing itself. Minimalism wasn’t just a design principle. It was a necessity.

The Myth of Visible UX in Healthcare

Many products on the market are made to attract attention. This attention can be due to several attributes, including smooth animated interactions.

Healthcare operates differently.

Doctors and nurses don’t have the luxury of appreciating the beauty of an interface. Their focus needs to be on the patient. Any wasted time due to an interface requiring an extra tap or hurdle is time taken from a patient. There is one thing I’ve remembered from this project. The best thing to say about healthcare solutions is that they are boring. It’s an indicator that no one is ever talking about the interface.

Why Interface Overhead Matters

Healthcare workers are required to be multifaceted.

For example, a nurse might be responding to an alert, working with another department, and monitoring another patient – and sometimes these things are all happening simultaneously. Delays can cost important moments.

This phenomenon helped us with one of our questions:

What information is useful at this specific moment?

We used our findings to inform several aspects of our research, including, but not limited to, alert prioritization and context. Data should be limited to what is most helpful, and we assumed our target audience to be the healthcare community based on this principle. It sounds pretty straightforward. We quickly learned that simplifying assumed “normal” behaviors was the most helpful thing we could do. Designing with healthcare contexts in mind quickly became the focal point of our workflow. The principle was easy to communicate, but very challenging to implement.

Designing Communication That Stays Out of the Way

Modern communications systems tend to become overloaded with information.

If every request is treated as a priority, soon none will be.

We established ‘working communication’ systems to avoid continuous disruption to employee focus. Notifications had to express varying levels of urgency. Employees had to quickly interpret status updates and readily identify and understand the urgency of communication escalation.

Interestingly, the following user requested improvements, which were positively received and appreciated the most, were exactly the things the users didn’t really perceive:

• More streamlined processes with reduced confirmation requests
• Navigational improvements
• Improved escalation with reduced need for direct confirmation requests

Memorable interactions were never the intention. The focus was, and continues to be, on ensuring a seamless communication experience, with less disruption and friction to the user.

When Backend Systems Become UX

This project taught me a lesson that goes beyond screen design.

The product’s impacts on daily life came from how we designed notification timing, routing, logic, escalation rules, and workflow prioritization.

As designers, we focus on interfaces. We learned that the most important aspects of UX design occur before a screen is visible.

In many respects, the backend became the experience. The system felt seamless and easy to understand when all the needed information arrived to the right people at the right time and when it didn’t, no amount of visual design could help.

The Best UX Is Barely Noticed

The best feedback we received was not about our colors, design, or layout.

People said:

“It just worked.”

“Communication became faster.”

“I didn’t have to think about it.”

The platform created clear improvements, including:

• 32% fewer steps to complete common communication tasks
• 27% less time to complete response to urgent tasks and alerts
• Increased ease to access important tasks
• Improved support for multitasking within active clinical workflows

Most significantly, coordination among the care teams became easier. Conversations happened in a timelier manner. Alerts were received by the right people in a more optimal timeframe. Clinicians, overall, had to spend less time managing the system.

One thing this project altered for me was the assumption that UX consists of great and memorable experiences.

Since this project, I realized that some of the best experiences actually consist of the ones that people hardly notice at all.

In particular, in the healthcare field, technology is most effective when it’s unobtrusive and supports the work rather than pulling focus.

To me, this is what invisible UX stands for.