CUI update: new design guidance available
Microsoft’s Common User Interface (CUI) team has posted updated guidance and new and updated controls and samples on its website.
It has also posted a new video from Dr Shaun O’Hanlon, the clinical design director for GP systems experts EMIS, in which he talks about the value of the project to the company. "They can pick the design guidance up off the shelf, read it, and apply what is relevant to a primary healthcare record system.”
“We have become convinced that Microsoft and the CUI team are focused on helping us make our development processes easier and on supporting patient care,” he says.
“We have benefited from the availability of components through the toolkit that we can apply rapidly into our EMIS Web application using modern development tools.
“We have also benefited because the design guidance [makes the lives of our] developers and designers a lot easier. They can pick the design guidance up off the shelf, read it, and apply what is relevant to a primary healthcare record system.”
The CUI programme was a feature of the first Enterprise Agreement (EA) that Microsoft signed with the NHS. It was extended when a new EA was signed in 2007.
The programme has a number strands to make NHS systems more intuitive and therefore easier and safer to use and to help the NHS get the most out of its IT investments.
Design guidance indicates how things that need to be displayed in NHS IT systems – such as names or dates - should be displayed, while the toolkit turns the guidance into components that software developers can use.
“EMIS is looking to enhance EMIS Web through iteration with the CUI programme,” says Dr O’Hanlon. “We are presenting the CUI team with more challenges to try and enhance our system moving forwards, not only our clinician focused system, but possibly our patient focused system as well.”
Related links