The American Board of Radiology has an important mission: certifying that the nearly 35,000 radiologists in America have the requisite knowledge, skill, and understanding to benefit patients. The ABR is among the largest national medical specialty boards that make up the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and is at the forefront of using technology in medical certification.
As the Director of IT at the ABR, Scott Segal has a been a client of Slide UX since 2016. Together, we’ve worked with Scott and his team on projects ranging from the organization’s rebranding and website enhancements to the launch of the online longitudinal assessment (OLA) which helps radiologists maintain their certifications. Most recently, we’ve partnered on bringing the traditionally in-person oral exams into a secure remote space.
In this edition of For Humans’ Sake, Senior UX Designer Lindsay Winters talked to Scott about:
How user insights can change assumptions, even when the answers seem evident.
Why it’s important to talk to the people who use the product you’re building.
Why you should consider the conceptual complexity of anything you're designing from the start.
Understanding that you’re not your user (you know too much!)
How Slide UX takes time to understand their business and understand the perspective of customers.
Lindsay Winters: Can you share an example of a time when a user insight changed your assumptions?
Scott Segal: “This happened relatively recently.
“A developer asked me what I thought was a no-brainer question, about how the doctors using our software (from three different fields of medicine) would want a particular feature to work for collaboration. I said all of them would absolutely want Option A.
“Then we casually validated it with the first of the medical specialties, and they said “No, it's B.”. And then the second – “No, it’s B.” And the third, ‘it's B’. It was a great reminder of how you make assumptions, but you often guess wrong.”
Lindsay: What words of wisdom would you share with other product leaders, based on your experiences?
Scott: “Don't be afraid to talk to your customers, both internal customers and external customers, throughout the design process. I've seen is a reluctance to speak to the people who often do the actual work itself. So you're building an accounting system and you don't talk to the bookkeepers.
“Maybe you speak to the accountants and the CFO, but I would say often the people who are at what gets described as the lower level employees have the most insights into how things really work and how they should work.”
Lindsay: What professional advice would you give to your younger self?
Scott: “I would tell myself to be much more mindful about how conceptually complex something is. You know, when you're young and you think you can keep all of it in your head? And you're never going to forget how it works and how all the pieces fit together. Then you finish a project, it's a success, but then you have to go back to modify it six months later—a year later and you realize how little of it that you recall.
“Then the application is so complex. It's very difficult to get back to what you had in your head at the time.
“So I think I would tell my younger self, think about the conceptual complexity of anything you're designing from the start. Always think about the people that come after you to maintain it, so that they don't have to spend six months unraveling all the assumptions you made that aren't really reflected in the design.”
Lindsay: It has always been clear how much the ABR values feedback. What decisions have you had to go back and revisit based on things you've learned along the way?
Scott: “I think the decision that we revisit along the way, based on what we learned most often relates to how something was designed in terms of the workflow for the user. When we design it, we're always thinking about how it's supposed to work in our heads. So we have a very difficult time anticipating where the user is going to get thrown off.”
“We often see that things that we thought were absolutely clear are actually not clear to users and it's not their fault. It's because we had in our head a complete vision of how it worked, so we never saw the gaps that a new user would have.”
Lindsay: How has Slide UX contributed to your success?
“What you come back with is something that really solves the problem because you’ve taken time to understand our business and understand the perspective of our customers. And that’s what makes it so valuable.”
Scott: “Slide UX takes the time and makes the effort to really understand our customers and the business we're in. We often see that we're able to bring Slide UX the challenges we face. We don't bring them a solution. We don't bring them, “Here's how you could solve a problem.” We really bring them a problem that we struggle with.
“And very often what we get back is not what we expect. What you come back with is something that really solves the problem because you've taken time to understand our business and understand the perspective of our customers.
“And that's what makes it so valuable.”
About For Humans’ Sake
If you’re passionate about making other people’s lives easier through great user experiences, you’ll enjoy For Humans’ Sake, a video series from Slide UX that curates wisdom and helpful insights from experienced product leaders in a bite-sized format.
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