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User Considerations

Here are some of the best practices we have learned from years of creating patient-centric apps.

App Audience​

Patients​

The first objective of a patient-focused app should be maintaining good medication adherence on a day-by-day basis. A secondary objective is displaying history and long term trends for patient perusal.

Providers​

The first objective of a provider-focused app should be retreiving and securely storing the dose records, as well as displaying history and long term trends to assess and coach the patient.

App Usability​

  • If your app has an onboarding experience, include a screen that explains the NFC scanning process, and gives the user a button to "Try Out" an NFC scan so they can become familiarized.
  • Offer some subtle feedback on each successful scan, even if the user's data hasn't changed. For example a snackbar, a banner, etc. that indicates "Scan success!" and disappears automatically after a few seconds.

NFC Scanning Issues​

  • In general, Android has a more flexible NFC implementation system than iOS, which means Android users are subject to more NFC "gotchas". See Platform Considerations.
  • Phone cases with metal might block NFC signals (this can affect both iPhones and Android phones).

User Instructions​

  • Most non-technical users are unfamiliar with NFC. As part of your training or tutorials, we recommend you explain it like the Apple Pay or Google Pay mobile payment systems: when the screen changes, bring your phone close towards the tag device.
  • We recommend that you handle all of the errors described in the JSON Output or edge cases described in platform considerations. User should never be confused about why a scan didn't work.
tip

Consider writing a user manual with instructions for performing NFC scans. We can provide some of our own CertiScan manuals as inspiration for your own guides.