Portfolio: Sermo — Usability studies for an online physician community

Sermo is creating "the only online community where physicians around the nation exchange the latest medical insights with each other and improve patient outcomes - 24/7."

They have two distinct parts to the product, each with different user groups. Sermo called on Interaction Design to set up a series of usability studies, covering both parts.

Physician users The most important users are the physicians. The site gives them a chance to ask questions about unusual cases and share what they've learned. We saw how much they value this opportunity and gained insight into how they would use the site.

Investor users As Sermo's Web site noted, the other class of users includes business people, who are interested in "instantaneous access to what thousands of physicians on the front lines of medicine are learning every day."

Jump down to read goals and results of the study

Page from the Sermo application

A page from the Sermo application, showing featured postings by physicians

Goals & results of the study

The people at Sermo are really interested in observing reactions to their Web site and they value the user feedback. Here are some things we investigated and learned:

New vs existing users Two studies focused on existing users, while another included non-users. The non-users had a lot to tell us that we would not have learned by just talking with current users.

Proposed features We saw people react to existing features as well as designs that had not even been coded yet. This saves a great deal of development time.

Persona development We went into the studies with thoughts about who the users are and what they do. Our usability study process includes interview questions, so Sermo was able to refine their understanding of their personas (users and usage stories).

User model review People start building a model of how something works as soon they learn about it. For something new like Sermo, it's important to find out if the product actually matches this user model. If so, it's easier to learn and use.

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