PROPOSAL FOR A NEW USABILITY INDEX FOR PRODUCT DESIGN TEAMS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC

Usability is a key notion in most of products, especially for the medical devices. Nevertheless, sometimes this notion can be shelved in favour of other priorities such as reliability of the product. However many incidents related to products find their origin in bad usability. It's the reason why usability should reaffirm its role in product design by a greater inclusion. The challenge of this situation is to introduce the usability notion in the design process of products as medical devices in a simple and easily understandable way while the sector of medical devices for example is mostly made up of SMEs. A usability quantification would enable the enforcement of its role in this type of design. Moreover, usability quantification tools are often seen with a point-in-time approach that inhibit a complete integration in the design process. Finally usability quantification in the form of an index monitoring the product during its design process could be a solution to help the design team in decision-making, enhance the communication in the design team about usability and popularize the notion among the general public.