Human-centred design (HCD) is an approach to systems design that prioritises the needs, capabilities, and perspectives of end users throughout the development process. In digital health, HCD is essential for creating tools that clinicians and patients will actually use effectively.
Key principles in digital health
- Understanding users and their context - engaging with clinicians, patients, and administrators through ethnographic research, interviews, and observation to understand real workflows and needs.
- Co-design and iterative prototyping - involving end users as active participants in design, testing prototypes early and often, and refining based on feedback.
- Usability and accessibility - ensuring digital health tools are intuitive, efficient, and accessible to users with varying levels of digital literacy and ability.
- Evaluation in real-world settings - testing designs in the environments where they will actually be used, not just in controlled laboratory conditions.
Why it matters
Poor usability is one of the most frequently cited causes of digital health implementation failure. Systems designed without adequate user input often increase clinician burden, introduce safety risks, and face low adoption rates. The ISO 9241-210 standard provides a framework for human-centred design processes for interactive systems.