When AI user-experience (UX) testing is purposefully connected to professional development, Career UX not only strengthens practice, but also establishes a translational pathway where stakeholder insights drive improvements in both processes and outcomes, building trust. So, there is a reciprocal process between individuals learning and the remaking, and sometimes, transformations of practice.
“Career UX” captures the idea that while user-experience (UX) testing in healthcare is first and foremost about improving patient care, it also generates knowledge that enriches staff capability and informs system-level changes in practice . By linking UX insights to educative experiences including structured training and accredited university pathways, Career UX can potentially transform everyday practice in ways that can guide professional growth, strengthen workforce readiness, reinforce workplace resilience and adaptability as well as enhancing the design of healthcare degree programs.
Our approach
A key distinguishing feature of this research program is the through-lines it creates: using stakeholder user-experience (UX) testing of AI-enabled processes, extending to improvements in processes and outcomes, then informing professional development opportunities, and, ultimately, shaping the design and enactment of university curricula, as well as workplace practices. This virtuous cycle establishes an ongoing mechanism for quality improvement while producing translational research outcomes that directly connect practice, education, patient care and trust building.
Failure of healthcare startups can occur because of insufficient trust building (see for example. Straker, K., Peel, S., Nusem, E., & Wrigley, C. (2021). Designing a dangerous unicorn: Lessons from the Theranos case. Business Horizons, 64(4), 525-536; Kountze, M., & Lunsford, R. (2019). HealthSpot’s pursuit to provide global healthcare access through telemedicine. Journal of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth, 7, e19-1.)
A key mechanism for sectoral trust building is aggregated and ongoing feedback from user experience testing of AI-enabled processes, that can be used to informed industry guardrails (e.g. patient safety) and reciprocally support, professional development and university curricula. Guardrails can to be continuously updated through that reciprocity. Health and socialcare practitioners may need support in developing their understanding of AI. University curricula need to be continuously informed by real-world issues. Feeding UX outcomes back into process refinement and technology development ensures AI-enabled processes align with clinical workflows and patient care and safety, while also demonstrating responsiveness to user concerns.
Pitfalls and advantages of UX include:
- Without UX research: Features get built that no one wants; Marketing spend drives users to products they abandon; Runway disappears fixing preventable usability issues.
- With UX research: Ongoing UX feedback validates ideas early; Clearer process design and user need alignment; start-up funding is spent on scaling, not rework, patient outcomes and productivity improvements are achieved. Insights inform professional development and university degrees.
Career UX can supports trusted patient outcomes through supporting the development of AI knowledge and capabilities in healthcare teams, underpinned by a foundation of professional qualifications.