Using Scenarios Throughout The User-Centered Design Process in Healthcare

Context-specific descriptions of the intended user interactions with health information technology (HIT) systems provide an important perspective to the overall goals of HIT design. These descriptions — or scenarios — that represent the clinicians’ perspectives can describe how HIT should support users in providing patient care effectively, efficiently, and safely. Scenarios may improve the design of HIT systems by ensuring clinician needs are well-articulated for high-value patient-care situations. This Practice- Oriented paper presents suggestions for the development and application of clinical scenarios throughout a robust user-centered design (UCD) process. As a flexible artifact, different types of scenarios can be used at each point across the UCD process and the rationale for their use are discussed, and we suggest key aspects that must be included for each specific type of scenario. This practice innovation will be beneficial to practitioners working within UCD processes, as guidance on adding scenarios as a tool in their work.