nickolas saba

let's skip the small talk

DeepSight Technology

Senior UX Designer

JAN2025 — AUG2026

As the sole founding UX designer, designed a surgical ultrasound machine with AI needle tracking by conducting user research, crafting the design system, planning user workflows, and designing every screen and interaction Achieved 100%+ improved user satisfaction of the flagship feature - the tracking reticle - in each of 5 tested metrics by conducting user research, analyzing pain points, designing, implementing, and testing Cut field service calls by a projected 98% by designing, 3D-modeling, and prototyping a hardware attachment to the fiber-optic instrument port, the most critical hardware touchpoint of the system as well as creating the software workflows, interactions, and troubleshooting process necessary to allow for user recover Planned and managed the human factors and usability engineering report for Class II medical device FDA clearance

Noah Medical

Senior UX Designer

FEB2023 — APR2024

UX Designer

SEP2021 — FEB2023

As the sole founding UX designer, shipped a surgical robot with AI-enhanced tomography and 3D environment mapping, enabling tens of thousands of life-saving surgeries nationwide Reduced doctor-in-the-room time per procedure by ~50% by optimizing setup tasks Reduced user-facing errors by ~83% by designing mitigations and automatic handling Conducted formative and summative user research across more than 40 doctors to discover user needs, drivers, priorities, pain points, and evaluate designs Designed new visualizations that doctors described as having a “significant [positive] impact on biopsy quality” Enabled full teleoperation by designing controller interactions for touchscreen tasks system-wide Led a team to successfully file the FDA usability report of a Class III medical device with no follow-up questions from the FDA, writing over 200 user interface requirements and test cases as well as the software design description detailing my design system, all workflows, screens, and interactions

LVIS

Interaction Designer

JUN2021 — SEP2021

Crafted the design system to create a unified aesthetic and a faster development process Enabled patient monitoring monetization by designing automatic report generation, 2D and 3D brainwave visualizations, and AI analysis visualizations Increased ticket completion speed by ~67% by streamlining the design-to-development production process Interviewed ~10 doctors and technicians to discover knowledge gaps and tailor experiences to the audience Improved internal product understanding and trained new team members by plotting product workflows

Hologic

UX Designer

SEP2019 — MAY2021

Completed hundreds of design tickets to improve usability and solve new features in the radiology platform for breast cancer detection in an agile development environment Increased daily caseload and revenue for users by significantly reducing mouse movement back and forth from the toolbar via an interaction that allowed a radiologist to instantly swap between 8 different tools Acted as lead designer and user researcher on a new application from the ground up, allowing physicians to create customized reports for physical rehabilitation patients Patented an interaction to easily position an automatic breast imaging gantry, negating the need to search through menus

the process discover your users and their goals establish a design system that mirrors user values architect the workflows between users and goals design prototypes with instinctive controls test prototypes with users and adjust accordingly add delight with animations and decorative elements

discover the users While there are plenty of books and studies that go in depth into how to construct quick and intuitive interactions for every user, these can really only provide a foundation in specialized applications. You then have to tailor that foundation to your user base. The user is the ultimate source of truth in any application. They are subject matter experts, they are familiar with the competition, and most importantly their purchases are what pay the bills. This begs the question - who is the user? We can use demographics to find that our audience skews older to help realize that our text should be large and high-contrast, or that they actually would rather call a customer service rep instead of our shiny new AI chatbot. This mentality requires us as developers to put our egos aside and realize: we do not know what is best for our users, they do. By considering all the different factors from our users’ lives, we can put on a persona as we think about and discuss these ideas to help make sure we are solving the right problems. Chatting with users, establishing empathy, and understanding their goals, drivers, and pain points should be one of the first tasks for anyone you add to your team, not just designers.

establish a design system Imagine working with a team to build a house without blueprints. Without a design system, you are signing up for slower design, slower development, and an inconsistent experience. Taking the time to create a consistent method in which you build components is almost always worth the investment if you plan to have your product stick around for more than a few months. The return on that investment is a drastic reduction to design and development time on every new feature. Use your understanding of your users' drivers to influence your design style. Write down guidelines for how you think about and create new components. Define what units and increments you want to use, how components need to look and change in different scenarios, and how they might animate through interactions. Variablize everything and remember - less is more.

build the architecture A large portion of the UX designer’s job is creating and simplifying workflows. Begin by writing down the state your user begins in and the state they want to ultimately achieve through your product. Explore every edge case you can possibly think of and write down the steps to get them back to the primary flow, and recognize that all additional handling is opportunity for confusion and error. It can be easy to get bogged down by legacy features, but if they don’t make it easier for the user to achieve their goal, they are ultimately just distractions in the workflow. The more steps you have to add between your users’ initial state and their end goal, the less likely your product will be well-received. If a step can be optional, it probably should be. Think about the core interactions your user will need to hit on their journey with your product. What accomodations do you have to make throughout the rest of your product to make those core interactions as easy as possible? Does your system architecture reflect the impact of these interactions or are they outnumbered by low-value additions? “…the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.” - Albert Einstein

just design it already We’ve done a lot of background work, but now it is time to put pen to paper and really get the creative juices flowing. Start with an Occam’s razor approach with the simplest design needed to get the job done. If a feature will be rarely used and it’s absence doesn’t block the user from completing the task, leave it off for now and circle back after testing some of your crazier ideas. To fully realize the design process and reap it's benefits, time is of the essence. Rapidly prototype your solution, test, and repeat. If you made a good design system, even your rapid prototypes should looks very close to their final design. Know your tools, be organized, and build with an understanding of how you want your product to grow down the line. The creative space can be difficult to navigate, so it is critically important to create an environment of mutual trust with your team and be able to bounce ideas off of each other. Ego has no place in design, and you must be willing to give and receive criticism freely amongst your team to come up with the best possible solution. If your team is unable to engage in these conversations in a healthy way, the product and the user will suffer. Finally, understand that if your product has already garnered a large user base, the weight of creative direction has somewhat shifted to their hands. Delivering on expectations is a valid reason to not incorporate the hottest new design trends.

test with real users The very core of UX lies in the feedback loop. While the term “user experience” was only coined in the 90s, the fundamentals date back to the industrial revolution when companies started to realize that incorporating a feedback loop into their process would make for better products built faster. Properly done, research can save costly development time recovering from mistakes that are easily fixed in the design phase. Be sure to constantly evaluate your work to make sure it is up to the heuristic standards your users expect. For instance, my work with radiologists has taught me that above all else, they place heavy emphasis on keeping the number of clicks per patient down to an absolute minimum, even at the cost of other heuristics. It is also imperative that the data is collected in a responsible way, where questions in usability testing do not bias the user to respond positively to our own preferences, influencing variables can be isolated, and root problems can be identified. These roots can often be discovered by asking a simple question: why?

add delight :) The last step in the process and the one that tends to get left out is the delight of it all. Many modern designs look like fresh from the cookie cutter and feel completely soulless all in the name of professionalism. No matter who your user is, humans are human and humans like to have fun. Even in very technical applications, a designer should try to find places where it can still be appropriate to the tone of their design system to add delight through an interesting animation or the wording of a message. The impact of delight is often undervalued and can both differentiate your product from competitors and leave your users with a positive attitude - one that can affect their desire to market your product on your behalf.