OTTAVA
General Surgical Robotics Platform
UX/UI Design
Overview
OTTAVA is the new surgical robitic platform that offers unrivaled flexibility and control compared to the rest of the market.
The new system is designed with six arms to provide more control and flexibility in surgery, while its arms will be integrated into the operating table. Additionally, the platform has a zero-footprint design to enable patient access, increase space in the operating room and improve workflow.
Role
UX/UI Design
Prototyping
User Testing
Productionizing
Tools
Figma
Principle
JIRA
Confluence
Collaboration
Clinical Engineer (CE)
Human Factor Engineer (HFE)
Front-end Software Team
Back-end Software Team
System Engineer Team
Internal & External User
Multi-disciplinary Team Collaboration
Collaboration among multi-disciplinary teams is a daily activity for us due to the sheer complexity of the product. Communication is the key to achieve our product goal. We must hunt down all the information we need from the right person and the right team.
Clinical Engineers
Understand clinical need and requirement.
Learn user desired workflow and OR staff coordination.
System Engineers
Learn the high-level working principle/mechanism of the system/feature. Understand feature related system inputs and responses.
Internal and External Users
Learn different experience aspects from novice users to experts. Gethering user testing data and analyze test result.
Human Factor Engineers
Learn surgeon and other OR staff’s usability concern and patient risk.
Front-end & Back-end SW Engineers
Understand feasibility and implementation complexity. Discuss how to reduce technical complexity without compromise too much user experience.
Other UX, UI Designers
Brainstorm, ideation and feedback.
Divide and conquer different tasks at the same time for the same feature to be more efficient in short timeline.
Our Design Processes
This is a small and young team. We try to establish a process that works for both the design team and other teams based on design process and software agile development process.
Challenges
Timeline vs Technical Complexity vs Usability
An aggressive program-level timeline is always the “enemy” of product design. But it is also a force to push everyone to move forward fast and focusing on the most important aspects. There is no perfect solution for any issue/feature. It has been always a balancing act between timeline, technical complexity, and usability. And the job for us is to find a solution that can be executed within the timeline with minimal technical complexity and usability impact.
Design Requirement
Once the design team starts developing a new feature, we will reach out to different groups and gathering all the latest information related to this feature. It is really important and challenging to connect with the right team with the right person. And find the right documentations. We will then consolidated all the information & requirements and translate them into designs.
The project is being developed and updated with many teams simultaneously. Meanwhile, there are ongoing lab experimentations happing almost every day. New information, findings, and requirements are being discovered all the time. We will need to quickly adapt to all of the new information and make educated design decisions as soon as possible.
Objective and Subjective Feedback
Getting external users' feedback is more and more challenging due to Covid-19. We are more and more relying on internal users for feedback, which raises another challenge for us – differentiates objective and subjective feedback. All the internal users have a great knowledge of the system and clinical needs. But they are all heavily involved with the system development. That can be tricky from time to time. We sometimes get to hear some subjective feedback rather than objective. This is where follow-up questions are very important to dig out the root of a particular feedback/opinion.