Anurag Sharma
“Through UX design intervention, we want to ensure that doctors do not spend precious time on tedious documentation and time-consuming applications. Instead, they should be able to focus more on quality patient engagement.”
 
Anurag Sharma

Assistant Manager (UX)
Citius Tech

CUA taught me that design is not just common sense

by HFI

Describe your role in your current organization.

I work as an Assistant Manager (UX) at Citius Tech. We are a specialist provider of technology consulting and solutions to some of the largest healthcare organizations worldwide. My role involves making healthcare data insightful, consumable, and action-oriented. Through UX design intervention, we want to ensure that doctors do not spend precious time on tedious documentation and time-consuming applications. Instead, they should be able to focus more on quality patient engagement.

Tell us about some of your recent projects.

I have designed a diverse range of healthcare applications that covers areas like EHRs, in-patient rehabilitation, lesion (tumor) tracking, population health management, hospital utilization, and analytics dashboard for medical/non-medical users to manage the quality of healthcare services being delivered.

How does the CUA training help you in your everyday work?

I started my career as a software engineer and worked with a leading Indian industrial and consumer products group. Infact I joined Citius Tech as a Senior Software Engineer. But after gaining insights into design and learning more about it, I decided to plunge in and join the design fraternity.

Initially, I would design instinctively. My impression was that design was all about common sense. However, the CUA training presented me with a very systematic and scientific approach to design. I was introduced to various design tools and techniques. Now I am more confident about the work I do.

Apart from that, what fascinates me is how scientifically proven theories find an application in everyday life, how they impact human behavior, and how we can measure it for business success. I have taken such a keen interest in all of this that now cognitive psychology has become one of my favorite subjects!

How has this changed the way you communicate with your management?

In the design world, at every stage, we need to convince everyone in the room of our design. You must have strong logical reasoning and scientific knowledge backing up every single design decision—so that stakeholders/product teams will trust you more and design can be pushed at a strategic level. In order for design to be taken seriously, it has to be communicated effectively. The knowledge I gained during CUA has enabled me to present appropriate design rationale—in a detailed, scientific manner. I am now confident of communicating my design to product teams and all stakeholders involved.

What about your job excites you the most?

As a UX designer, I can see the big picture of what I do. I can relate to its value generation in real life for patients, doctors, and payers. This makes me feel very responsible about my work. And that keeps me going.

What are the challenges you face in your work and how do you overcome them?

Our environment is strongly delivery-focused. So my work starts way before user research—with educating project team members on why should we go for design and the value design brings to the table. We also need to operate within various ‎technical and business constraints but those arrive later in the game.

To overcome these challenges, last year we organized the first ever “UX Week” event in my organization, catering to people from every level in the hierarchy. We arranged the following activities:

  • Design Competition – to spread awareness about how simple and easy tweaks can make our everyday items more usable
  • Case Studies Sessions – to inform middle management of the value-add created by the design team to existing client projects within organization
  • Design Conclave – to understand from upper management their pain points, and how UX can effectively integrate into the existing environment to provide more value to the organization

This turned out to be a great initiative to create awareness of the impact and ROI of UX in our healthcare domain.

Time and budget constraints pose another challenge. For which, over time, we have built a UX knowledge library with many reusable components, bringing down our TAT in agile environment.

How do you see your current role changing in the next couple of years? 

I definitely expect more challenges, innovation to deal with those, and overall, a very interesting ride in UX ahead of me.

Immediately, I would like to help my organization move towards a mature UX practice that is fully supported and integrated into our routine product development. In the long run, I expect that AI will change many dimensions of healthcare. The way in which care is delivered will change. The traditional mode of human-computer interaction through regular interfaces will change and that will surely make the future of UX exciting and intriguing.

CUA of the Month

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Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014

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Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014

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