Mapping Usability Heuristics to Medical Ethical Principles in Clinical Decision Support Design

Abstract

Human factors professionals voice concerns about the slow and uneven adoption of human-centered design (HCD) principles in healthcare. With good intentions and best efforts, human factors work in healthcare continues, but to understand and to be understood we must share a language that speaks to one another. One way to facilitate this understanding is by bringing attention to how we talk about decision-making approaches in medical ethics and HCD. Both disciplines suggest efforts should be participatory, guided by a set of principles applied thoughtfully, with critical consideration to context and trade-offs. Considering the connections between usability heuristics for design and medical ethical principles may offer a bridge between disciplines and their associated dialects. In this paper, we provide three representations mapping ethical principles to design principles, including usability heuristics: a word tree visualization, narrative passages, and a table format. We believe this mapping demonstrates both that ethical design is inherently human-centric and that human-centered design is ethical design.