Designing Simple Instructions for Medical Products

This book explores the nuances of making the narrative and graphical content of instructions – an important part of a medical product’s user interface – safe, effective, and satisfying to use. The book presents many design principles in an artful manner, replete with interesting, real-world examples. Designing Simple Instructions for Medical Products provides motivation and guidance to create excellent instructions that accompany medical products. For too long, instructions have been discounted as a user interface component unworthy of significant investment. Consequently, many manufacturers have put limited effort into instructions, viewing them as obligatory. This book seeks to change the narrative about instructions for use by highlighting their importance and providing easy-to-follow guidance for creating compelling instructions that can increase user satisfaction. It addresses many broad topics, such as the instructional development process, page layout, writing style, and drawing attention to critical information. Then, it dives into specific topics, such as designing comprehensible graphics, incorporating information navigation cues, and writing concisely. The book will help anybody, from the novice to the experienced pro, tasked with designing instructions for a medical product. In turn, better instructions should help manufacturers produce demonstrably safe and effective products with clear benefits accruing to the healthcare system and to patients.