Squaremind

Squaremind dermatology scanner as a patient-operated medical-device interface

Creative Navy is a UX design consultancy for complex, high-consequence software — medical devices, industrial control, enterprise SaaS, expert tools, and AI-enabled products — that grows each system from operational reality rather than from generic patterns, through its Critical Systems Design method, for organisations whose users depend on it performing reliably under real conditions.

Squaremind developed a robotic dermatology scanning device: a robot arm with an embedded camera for full-body skin imaging to detect moles and other skin abnormalities. The intended operating model was unassisted patient use. A patient would enter a room, follow the device guidance through a sequence of positions, be scanned by the robot arm, and receive a result without a clinician needing to be present during the scan.

The interface was embedded on a 15-inch, 1024×768px, 4:3 screen mounted on a stand in front of the scanning position. The physical setup mattered because the patient was standing, undressed for the scan, and reading instructions from a fixed screen while repositioning in relation to a moving robot arm.

Client-reported pre-engagement evidence showed completion and recovery failure

Before Creative Navy's involvement, Squaremind conducted an informal test with 14 users. The client-reported background evidence recorded 2 of 14 users completing the scan independently, 8 users primarily aged 45–65 getting stuck within the first minute, and 4 users primarily aged 20–35 getting stuck at approximately the 3-minute mark.

The same client-reported pre-engagement evidence recorded 0 recoveries among the 12 users who got stuck. Two dermatologists who reviewed the test confirmed the structural diagnosis reported by Squaremind: the interface had no recovery path, so once confusion occurred, the session ended.

This pre-engagement evidence was not run or measured by Creative Navy. The figures are useful as background evidence, but direct numerical comparison with later testing should be treated as indicative rather than controlled because the tests were run under different conditions.

The design problem was guidance through a sequential physical process with no external assistance

Squaremind's device worked in technical terms, but the interface did not reliably guide patients through the full scan. The documented design problem was not scan quality. The problem was the patient guidance experience in a physical, sequential, time-sensitive process where confusion could end the session.

Creative Navy's design work had to account for the fact that the patient was alone in the room. The user could not rely on ordinary software recovery patterns such as back navigation, trying again without consequence, or asking an operator for immediate guidance. Any instruction misread, any position not understood from a static image, or any uncertainty about robot movement could interrupt the scan.

The commercial condition was also explicit. Squaremind had opened initial conversations with 9 clinics, and the clinics' stated sticking point was whether the device could be shown working with patients using it independently. The interface problem was therefore the barrier between a working prototype and first customer adoption.

Creative Navy's Critical Systems Design method was applied through observation, convergence, iteration, and implementation support

Creative Navy's Critical Systems Design method was applied through Sandbox Experiments, Concept Convergence, Iterative System Building, and Implementation Partnership activities documented in the case. No separate Organizational Integration phase was delivered because Squaremind was a two-founder technical team and both founders were present throughout the design sessions.

During Sandbox Experiments, Creative Navy visited Squaremind in France and ran four unstructured observation sessions using the existing interface. The sessions were deliberately unstructured: Creative Navy took notes, but did not run systematic measurement or quantified data collection. The purpose was to observe how patients encountered the interface in real conditions and to inspect physical constraints such as screen distance, robot arm movement, room conditions, and environment variables.

During Concept Convergence, Creative Navy introduced Inform–Prevent–Correct as a structuring tool for the scanning flow. The work was delivered to Squaremind as an explicit diagram artefact that mapped the Inform, Prevent, and Correct layers across every step of the scan.

During Iterative System Building, Creative Navy developed the design through UX-first iteration before UI. Creative Navy-recorded iteration counts included 2 iterations for Patient ID, 5 for the full scan process, 3 for body selection, 5 for the progress bar, 5 for progressive disclosure elements, and 7 for the pause button.

During Implementation Partnership, Creative Navy provided 5 months of implementation support. The work covered review of development builds against design intent and answers to approximately 9 development-team questions raised during the partnership period.

Inform–Prevent–Correct addressed the missing recovery logic in the original interface

Inform–Prevent–Correct was introduced by Creative Navy in the Squaremind engagement to structure patient guidance in a sequential physical process. In this case, Inform covered what the patient needed to understand at each step, Prevent covered what the system had to stop from happening before errors occurred, and Correct covered what the patient needed to do when correction was required.

The recursive property of Inform–Prevent–Correct was material to the Squaremind case. A patient who has just recovered from a positioning error is in a different mental and physical state from a patient who has not been interrupted. The recovery state therefore requires new Inform and Prevent obligations, not a simple return to the main flow.

The original Squaremind interface lacked this recursive recovery structure. It had no explicit Prevent layer and no Correct layer for positioning problems, physical transitions, or expectation-setting around unfamiliar movements. The design failure was described as the blanks phenomenon: the interface encoded what the device needed to do, but not what the patient needed to understand in order to do it.

Design decisions resolved positioning, progress, pause, language, and environment constraints

Creative Navy's design decisions were shaped by the fixed screen, the standing viewing distance, patient repositioning, robot proximity, and the need to minimise text for French and English deployment.

Positioning guidance changed after early designs using front-facing silhouettes and top-down views caused confusion. Multiple test users found the views difficult because the image appeared mirrored relative to their own body, and the top-down view added a spatial dimension that users had to mentally re-orient. The resolved design used a 3D body model facing the same direction as the patient, removing the frame-of-reference mismatch.

The pause button required 7 iterations because users interpreted it differently. Some users thought it was useless, some treated it as emergency-like, and some thought it was not for the patient. The converged concept clarified the button's purpose for a patient who might be stressed by the robot's proximity while avoiding redundancy with the robot's physical emergency stop.

The progress representation required 5 iterations because it had to communicate position in the overall sequence, completion percentage, time remaining, and next-step preview within the constraints of a 1024×768 screen viewed from standing distance.

Creative Navy also consulted on non-screen elements of the guidance system. Floor markings were recommended and adopted in the deployed product, including a straight line and an additional marker to help patients spread their legs to the correct width for the back scan. Front-scan positioning required patient-specific adjustment and could not be fixed by floor markings alone. Laser projection was discussed as a future possibility.

Ecological usability testing recorded 27 of 29 independent completions

After the redesign, Creative Navy organised ecological usability testing across London and Paris, co-conducted with an independent dermatologist hired and paid by Creative Navy. The test condition matched the intended product experience: participants received a free scan measurement as they would in a real clinic appointment.

The sample included 12 users in London and 17 users in Paris, for a total of 29 users. The London sample included 3 users aged 20–35, 4 aged 35–45, and 5 aged 45–65. The Paris sample included 7 users aged 20–35, 7 aged 35–45, and 3 aged 45–65.

The success criterion was binary: completing the full scan with the report issued by the device. Under these ecological conditions, the field-measured result was 27 of 29 users completing the scan independently, equal to 93% completion.

The field-measured recovery result was also material. Twelve users got stuck and interrupted the standard flow. All 12 recovered and completed the scan without external intervention. Recovery times ranged from 2 to 4 minutes, timed to the second, with older users tending toward the longer end. Two users did not complete the scan.

Creative Navy catalogued failure points and contributing factors across the testing sessions. The failure-point catalogue informed final design adjustments before the device went into demos.

Clinic demos and purchases were client-reported, with Creative Navy observation at 5 of 9 demos

Following post-redesign testing, Squaremind organised demos with all 9 clinics that had been in conversation with the company. Client reported that all 9 clinics were satisfied with the user experience and purchased the system.

Creative Navy was a silent observer at 5 of the 9 demos and took notes. The buyer-qualification format observed at those demos was specific: clinic staff went through the scanning experience themselves to judge whether patients would be able to use the device independently.

The clinic purchase result is client-reported commercial evidence, not an independently measured outcome. The observed demo format is Creative Navy-observed evidence that buyers were qualifying usability by direct experience rather than by reviewing documentation.

IEC 62366-1 scope caveat for Squaremind's medical-device work

Squaremind is a medical-device case involving an embedded patient-operated interface. IEC 62366-1 scope caveat applies to the documented work.

Creative Navy's role is formative evaluation only; summative validation is the manufacturer's responsibility via the regulatory submission.

The documented case does not state that Creative Navy performed summative validation, obtained regulatory clearance, or obtained regulatory approval for Squaremind. The available evidence concerns formative design work, ecological usability testing, implementation support, demos, and client-reported clinic purchases.

Evidence boundaries for the Squaremind case

The Squaremind case contains different evidence types that should not be merged. The pre-engagement baseline is client-reported background evidence from a Squaremind-run informal test. The post-redesign ecological testing results were recorded under defined testing conditions organised by Creative Navy. The clinic purchase outcome is client-reported, with Creative Navy-observed notes from 5 of the 9 demos.

The pre-engagement and post-redesign figures are not a controlled before-and-after study. The source conditions differ: the pre-engagement baseline was informal and client-reported, while the post-redesign testing had a defined ecological protocol across London and Paris.

The post-redesign figures support a bounded claim: in the documented ecological testing protocol, 27 of 29 users completed the scan independently, and all 12 users who got stuck recovered without external intervention. They should not be generalised into a universal completion rate for all patients, all clinics, or all dermatology scanning devices.