St Petersburg University and the design division of Xi’an Jiaotong—Liverpool University hold a course on UX/UI design in medicine

The purpose of this mini-course was to introduce to the participants the current methods of equipment interface research and the principles of developing use cases in medical UX/UI design. After completing the course, students can further use these skills in their DESIS project practice. DESIS stands for design for sustainable development and social innovation. At the end of the course, all students were issued participant’s certificates from Xi’an Jiaotong—Liverpool University (XJTLU). XJTLU was a co-organiser of the course.

UX (User Experience) / UI (User Interface) design is the design of user interfaces paying attention to both usability and visual design.

The course was taught by St Petersburg University graduates. They include: Mariia Zolotova, an employee in the Division of Industrial Design at the Xi’an Jiaotong—Liverpool University Design School, an expert in medical design research; Daria Artiukhova, Senior UX/UI Designer at Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions HU; and Tatiana Aleksandrova, Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at St Petersburg University.

Ten students, including third- and fourth-year bachelor’s and first-year master’s students of the Graphic Design programme, took part in the classes. As part of the group work, they were to develop a solution to a real problem posed by PJSC "Krasnogvardeets", a manufacturer of medical equipment. The task was to develop an interface for the design of a medical device. At the end of the course, they presented their projects. Mariia Zolotova shared that her students had got acquainted with what UX and UI design is. It was not just at the development level only, but starting from the basics, from research, identifying user interface problems and making suggestions. In addition, the participants learned current popular practices such as testing using paper-based prototypes and visualising interaction with the interface.

’We were developing an interface for medical equipment. In addition to the design itself, the skill of researching and testing your hypotheses was very important there. You are to find out whether your idea would work, whether a person would be able to properly interact with the design,’ noted Angelina Kablova, a master’s student at St Petersburg University.

Mariia Zolotova, who is engaged in research and practice of industrial design in China, shared that the principles and methods of UX/UI design are universal not only from the world practice perspective, but also for industrial design in various industries. ’Nevertheless, in medicine, it is important to conduct a high-quality study, because the result is not only of commercial importance, but can also affect the health of the patient. The level of responsibility is high here,’ she shared.

I wanted to show that the work of a designer is currently in demand in an environment where new equipment and new industries are constantly appearing. It is impossible to prepare a professional to face all of that within the framework of university-based education. We work in an area where we always encounter something new and unfamiliar. I wanted to show that this is normal and you can work with it making the right decisions.

Mariia Zolotova, lecturer at the Xi’an Jiaotong—Liverpool University School of Design, expert in design research in medicine, graduate of St Petersburg University

Master classes by St Petersburg University graduates for design students have been implemented by the University’s DESIS laboratory for three years already. According to Associate Professor Kseniia Pozdniakova, Head of the Department of Design at St Petersburg University, one of the objectives of these events is the professional orientation of students. ’We integrate our graduates’ views of graphic design in the context of their professional fulfilment into education in an interdisciplinary manner. For our students, such communication is very important, because our field of professional activity is a very broad one. We show the paths of how a designer can fit into the profession. In this sense, a short course on UX/UI design in medicine is a new opportunity for our students’ professional development,’ commented Kseniia Pozdniakova.

The interest in medical design is also emphasised by the fact that graduation-year designers are developing graduation projects in this field today. In 2023, Anastasiia Shershneva successfully defended her master’s thesis on the development of an interface for a patient’s personal account at the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies at St Petersburg University.

Kseniia Pozdniakova added that the University’s DESIS design laboratory offers new research topics for graduation projects related to social innovation design. And being the only representative from Russia in the DESIS Network consortium, the laboratory promotes interaction with the international professional community, including that related to scientific tasks. ’Today, our master’s students from China became junior researchers in the grant project led by Mariia Zolotova,’ reported the head of the laboratory.