By Oscar Daws, Co-founder and Managing Director, Tone Product Design
It can be tempting to cut corners on design to save time or money. In healthtech and medtech, however, this is usually a false economy.
Products that ignore or sideline human-centred design risk more than frustrated users – they may face poor adoption, patient safety issues and wasted development effort.
While engineering and functionality are essential, they alone do not guarantee clinical or commercial success.
Thoughtful design clarifies the product vision, focuses teams on the right problems and ensures products are intuitive, safe and easy to use.
The hidden cost of poor design
Poor design is more than inconvenient – confusing interfaces and difficult-to-use equipment can reduce effectiveness or lead to errors. Delaying design input is especially costly.
Teams can reach advanced stages of development before discovering usability issues that are expensive or difficult to fix. Attempting to solve these issues through instructions or labelling rarely works well, as it’s notoriously difficult to ensure users actually read them.
Early involvement of designers helps anticipate these challenges and prevent problems before products reach the market.
Even small design choices can have a measurable impact. Colour choices, layout, form factor and messaging, when applied thoughtfully, reduce errors, guide correct use and improve user confidence.
In clinical settings, these choices help ensure tasks are performed efficiently and safely, while minimising cognitive load on the end user.
Design expertise matters
Inclusive and effective design is never a matter of luck. It requires expertise, experience and a systems-level understanding of the wider context in which the product sits.
Designers draw on human factors, ergonomics, design theory, behavioural engineering and social sciences to address complex challenges while balancing regulatory, engineering and commercial constraints.
Design expertise also challenges assumptions. Users often skip instructions because they believe they already know how to use a product.
In many cases we can leverage those existing learnt behaviours to make products immediately intuitive.
However, sometimes they work against us. For example, it can be particularly challenging to get users to interact with a familiar looking product in a new way.
In these instances, adding ‘intentional friction’ can help – a new and unexpected step to an otherwise familiar unboxing process can signal that the packaging differs from expectations, nudging users to actually look at the instructions properly and use the product safely.
Design drives innovation and can unlock significant commercial opportunities.
While working with Proteus Digital Health, a pioneer in digital medicines, we designed a packaging solution to help patients set themselves up at home, so the product could be distributed through a mail-order pharmacy.
This was a significant usability challenge, but solving it through design cut out the significant costs of having health care professionals onboard patients directly.
How thoughtful design elevates
The best products ‘just work’ – users can’t always pinpoint why, they ‘just do’. They’re instinctual, solve the right problems and feel trustworthy.
Investing in design also supports commercial success.
Products that prioritise human-centred usability tend to achieve higher adoption, better differentiation and stronger engagement from clinicians and patients.
Take Cambridge Healthcare Innovations’ (CHI) new Quattrii dry powder inhaler.
CHI had created a transformative new technology and tested it with engineering prototypes. But they knew that for their product to resonate with patients and investors it needed design input.
In close collaboration with CHI’s engineers, we took time to craft a design that was not only much more intuitive to use, but was also aesthetically considered and discreet.
CHI later went on to announce a new and exclusive partnership with Aptar Pharma to commercialise Quattrii.
Design-led healthcare
Generative AI tools are making it easier for anyone to generate high-quality imagery at the early stages of the product development process.
But despite these tools, design expertise remains essential, because it connects usability, marketing, engineering and manufacturing, translating insights into practical solutions that balance safety, aesthetic and commercial needs.
Some may argue that regulatory pressures or tight budgets make design a luxury. Experience suggests otherwise.
Design is strategic, not cosmetic, and companies that integrate design early are better positioned to deliver solutions that meet user needs and perform well commercially.
It’s a simple choice, really: treat design as a central contributor to success, or risk leaving adoption, usability and impact to chance.
