Doctors - the ideal testers

The case for usability and documentation

My first job after university was as a software developer in a hospital. I was expanding an existing system to share medical data for a specific kind of child cancer. The need to build such a system came from the fact that as these cases are rare, information needs to be gathered from different locations.

The original mastermind behind the system had left. Ordinary mortals had to take over. ("Where horses are missing, donkeys serve.") Together with a colleague, I had to figure out how to add features (and which ones would make the biggest difference!), onboard new users - and make the system more usable. There were several functions, but was this what was really needed? Doctors turned out to be the ideal testers. They did not have any time, which meant if there was anything less than a straightforward path, any extra click or next step to think about, they would stop the interaction. I had had my first lessons about usability as a student (thanks for the articles, Jakob Nielsen!), so the general concept was not new to me. Here I learned how even seemingly minor issues were a big problem, depending on the context. No matter how the functions were called from a software development perspective, the naming and steps needed to be in a language trivial to consume for the specific end users. I also experienced that when something was done right, nobody would recognize it, because "things were just working".

There was one aspect where I did something right from the beginning and without anyone else telling me why or how: I wrote documentation, especially instructions for beginners, that were not about "all the things you can do with this system" but organized by "I want to do this specific job that is part of my work". I still remember this because someone said enthusiastically on the phone: "Finally something I understand." That was the moment when I knew I had done something profoundly right. I had won.

This did not mean that good work would pay off in getting a stable job. Performance and success with customers are no guarantee for that. This was a hard lesson to learn. Nevertheless, nowadays I look back with pride on how I created documentation based on the job to be done, and that I got some fundamentals right at the very start of my career.

Gloria Estefan: Dr. Beat