Designing Simple Instructions for Medical Products

This book explores the nuances of making the narrative and graphical content of instructions – an important part of a medical product’s user interface – safe, effective, and satisfying to use. The book presents many design principles in an artful manner, replete with interesting, real-world examples.

Designing Simple Instructions for Medical Products provides motivation and guidance to create excellent instructions that accompany medical products. For too long, instructions have been discounted as a user interface component unworthy of significant investment. Consequently, many manufacturers have put limited effort into instructions, viewing them as obligatory. This book seeks to change the narrative about instructions for use by highlighting their importance and providing easy-to-follow guidance for creating compelling instructions that can increase user satisfaction. It addresses many broad topics, such as the instructional development process, page layout, writing style, and drawing attention to critical information. Then, it dives into specific topics, such as designing comprehensible graphics, incorporating information navigation cues, and writing concisely.

The book will help anybody, from the novice to the experienced pro, tasked with designing instructions for a medical product. In turn, better instructions should help manufacturers produce demonstrably safe and effective products with clear benefits accruing to the healthcare system and to patients.

Michael Wiklund is an internationally recognized human factors engineering expert with more than 40 years of experience. He has authored several books about designing products for safe, effective, and satisfying use. He co-founded and serves as a Principal Consultant in the human factors practice at Emergo by UL, is a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University, and frequently speaks at industry events focused on safety.

Jonathan Kendler is a user interface designer and human factors engineer with more than 20 years of experience. He has designed user interfaces for various safety-critical products, including dialysis machines, robotic surgical systems, and infusion pumps

Katelynn Larson received a Bachelor of Arts in English/ Communications from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She is currently a technical writer with Emergo by UL.