Institute of Art Design + Technology Dún Laoghaire
Ireland’s campus for the Creative Industries

Jonathon Ryan 

MSc User Experience Design

Hi, I'm Jonathon, currently working as a Software Designer for IBM Watson Health, designing products in the US government healthcare space. I previously worked as a Graphic Designer and Art Director in advertising before turning my focus to User Experience Design.

Empathetic Research and Design of the Nurse Handover

Data Visualisation is prolific across business and science but is less utilised in healthcare settings. Poor usability is cited as the major prohibitor within digital healthcare systems and is particularly evident in patient documentation and nurse handover processes (Khan, Mukhtar, Ahmad, Gondal, Ilyas, 2017). This project documents the empathetic research and design of the nurse shift handover using a user-centred design process. Grounded in discovery research, the project demonstrates the pitfalls of current shift handover methods. The project illustrates how the use of a digital data visualisation dashboard to view, record and store patient information will improve communication, efficiency and overall satisfaction in nurse shift handovers.



Evaluating how nurse communication during shift handovers can be improved using interactive data visualisation

This paper argues that the use of a digital data visualisation dashboard to view, record and store patient information will improve nurse shift handovers in the following areas: the communication of essential information, the efficiency of handovers and overall satisfaction with the shift handover process. The paper describes the discovery research undertaken and how key findings revealed that current shift handover methods are primarily paper based, lack standardisation and are time consuming with excessive documentation and interruptions on the ward. These research findings were leveraged to inform a UX design process and experiment which demonstrate the benefits of a digital dashboard prototype over a paper method for nurses performing shift handovers.