Behavioral Science to Inform Hemodynamics Product Design

The challenge: next-generation product design

Change Healthcare Cardiology Hemodynamics™ is a monitoring system for cardiology departments that need to combine blood flow data, waveforms and images into one cardiac patient record. Importantly, it promotes physician efficiency by allowing physicians to complete their reports before the patients leave the room and helps reduce duplicate data entry through a single integrated database for all cardiovascular procedures.

In July 2021, product leaders knew it was time to envision a next generation product. The redesign effort needed to address increasing clinical demands and new technological innovation, while solving the existing and evolving needs of the customer. They asked our behavioral science team to help.

“When starting a project of this size, we knew that we needed to talk to as many users as possible, to get a high-level perspective on current workflows as well as detailed feedback on specific pain points. We wanted to do this in the most comprehensive and methodological way possible and were so excited to learn that there was an entire team to do just that!” Said Or Mendelevich, senior product manager.

What is behavioral science?

Behavioral science is the study of human behavior. It’s a mix of psychology, sociology, social and cultural anthropology and economics.

Behavioral science uses observation, focus groups, interviews, surveys and experimentation. Through this data-driven, human-centered approach, behavioral science helps uncover what people have done in the past and tries to try to predict — and often change — how they will behave in the future.

The solution: Reducing the high effort and cost of customization

To get a better understanding of current customer needs and pain points, the behavioral science team interviewed team members who support the product alongside a wide array of customers — physicians, technicians, nurses and administrators. In total, the insights of 33 participants from 6 health systems were collected and synthesized.

Throughout both rounds of research, the most common comment was, “Hemo is great when everything is set up and working like it should be.” Both team members and customers referenced the high level of customization required to be valuable. It would often take teams weeks of configuration and constant updates to reach the product’s full potential.

However, since physicians and technicians were busy tending to patient care and complex cardiac procedures, customization was often left unfinished due to the time and energy required to review the plethora of customizable options. This surfaced as a huge behavioral opportunity.

Design thinking: The psychological effects of over-customization

In the world of product design, customization has become the new standard. Often positioned to address unique needs, giving customers the choice to customize can help them feel in control. However, too many options or customizable features presents product teams with a new design challenge — choice overload.

Choice overload is the phenomenon linked to the negative psychological, emotional and behavioral effects of having too many options, and it has become a significant problem, especially for products in the clinical space.

On the surface, it may seem clear why choice overload is a problem. Decisions are harder to make, and the act of making the decision can leave people feeling overwhelmed, fatigued or even result in no choice being made at all.

Also, clinical settings are dynamic, high-stress, high-performance environments. These environmental factors render doctors and clinical technicians (those who operate Hemodynamics systems) even more susceptible to an overload of options or customizable features.

The results: Iterative testing of 19 behaviorally informed, user-centric concepts

Equipped with synthesized customer insights, the product and behavioral science teams began concept ideation. To combat the effects of choice overload, the cross-organizational team came up with concepts aimed at making the product feel familiar and easy to use without the high-configuration effort. The team produced 19 full-fledged concepts that have each undergone iterative testing with customers.

This case study highlights one of our core beliefs — our customers are the key to designing truly valuable products. When we connect and co-design with our customers, we can have a remarkable impact. We can build better products, help improve patient outcomes and, transform the healthcare industry — one behavior at a time.