Pointing the spotlight to the user

At Adapttech, we love technology. We see it as a medium to express our desire to help people with mobility problems, and to make a positive impact on their lives by helping them cope with their issues.  

Since the beginning, the company has implemented on the work culture that the client comes first, as you can see on this early blog post. Personally, this approach has always been very appealing for me, because I feel that my time, work and dedication will be used to help someone in the end.  

Three years after that blog post was published, the company has grown significantly and with more people coming in, we have been trying to push this idea further and farther. 

DESIGN CULTURE IN ADAPTTECH

All designers that worked and are working at Adapttech have pushed for user-centric design methodologies that build on user research for product design and development. This iterative process puts a spotlight on the users’ needs throughout the different stages of the design process to ensure that the products are accessible, suitable and useful for their work. In Adapttech’s case, we focus on how we can get a lower-limb amputee walking with a perfect fit as fast as possible, while providing the Certified Prosthetist Orthotist (CPO) quantitative information about their patient to assist them with better decisions.  

I could say that this User Centered Design methodology has been adopted from the beginning, and it always been smooth sailing, but actually, no.  

On INSIGHT, the founders of Adapttech did an extensive market research and interviewed a lot of CPOs and Clinic owners to evaluate their needs and the product to market fit. This was a really good practice, but was a point when this was put on a stand by, and new features of the product would be decided without having users’ insight or knowledge. Why? Because, on a technology-focused start-up that relies a lot on engineering disciplines without design thinking training, and with all those start-up problems of “no money” and “no time”, it can be difficult to stop and look at the user issues.  

We acknowledged that a cultural change within the company was needed. A shift in mindset from the technology-based “how my knowledge in a determined technology can develop the product” to the user-centric “Patient/CPO relation needs and problems should be at the center of the development”. 

THE SHIFT & MOVING FORWARD

This change started very slowly, but this publication was an important milestone on this journey, because the ideas and concepts on User Centered Design were proactively born from the engineering team and not from the design team. The huge task was not only focused on achieving a proper alignment of the socket in the scanner and improving the consistency of excellent results, but also on making a really intuitive and simple to use product that could save clinicians’ time.  

We have also started to implement some other changes. For instance, we count with CPO Cassandra Delgado’s support. She has being giving us great feedback to improve our products, testing them with new patients and obtaining qualitative information about INSIGHT. Also, with Pergali’s help, we have been organising focus groups to understand the market and the user problems and needs better, with the goal of providing more suitable products. The last remark would be our testing protocol and tools. We are able to evaluate the usability of the products and get quantitative and qualitative feedback so that we can iterate fairly quickly. 

BIGGER GOAL 

While this concern about the usability of the products is being considered, and the cultural shift has been quite visible during the last couple of years, we are aware that we can always do more.  

The bigger goal is to be able to conduct a deeper user research during the ideation and development phases. It all should start by visiting them on their work environment, seeing their tools, learning their vocabulary and getting every bit of information that we can use to help them. Then, we can take advantage of our rapid prototyping capabilities to go back to them with mock-ups or prototypes, and arrange user testing workshops that provide us feedback for the next improvement iteration.  

At Adapttech we will continue to work towards the goal of creating simple to use products that have a useful and positive impact on people lives. 

“Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.”  

Don Norman, The design of everyday things