As the world becomes increasingly digital, the importance of healthtech has grown. From telemedicine platforms to fitness apps that help people track their workouts and goals, healthtech can revolutionise healthcare. And one of the critical tools in the healthtech arsenal is design. But the problem is how HealthTech is often presented in a boring way. Its design is clumsy and not very intuitive.

We came up with the idea to provide the design community with a package on Figma with 98 well-crafted icons. We designed these icons based on our projects and experience to add a modern touch to your medical project. Each icon is carefully composed and tested with users, ensuring easy implementation and seamless integration into your design.

Here’s what the design process looked like!

Icon Thinking

Icons, those little images – vectors, have already become a permanent part of our lives since we started using any devices (not just mobile ones). From the beginning, there has been constant work on making them more understandable and visible. These elements are generally invisible on the Internet; we know they are. Try counting how many icons you see now on the page where you are reading this text and how many you paid attention to before. It’s funny how a small 24x24px image can guide us to reach a solution or hinder us ultimately.

One day I received an interesting proposal “how about trying to prepare a nice set of icons?”. A wonderful scenario, but at that moment, unrealistic. True, I knew what icons were, I knew which ones fit the interfaces and which ones didn’t, but that was it. So I started researching and asking friends. Okay, I know that there is a strange grid, iOS, Material, and IBM are based on it. Unfortunately, the more answers, the more questions. Tired of searching, I decided, “ok, what will be will be, I will try with what I already have”. And I started to draw these icons quite severely, but slowly, with each successive one, I began to understand more and more strongly why this grid is the way it is, what its drawbacks are, and the fact that, shhh….., sometimes it can be broken.

Design Process of the Healthtech Icon Pack

The design process was going great, with a few icons daily, thinking of new ones, drawing, tweaking, and researching. Until I decided to show it to someone for the first time, my ideal style lay in ruins because I was getting very different feedback. From flawlessly recognized, recognized with problems, to those unrecognizable. The difficulty is that the icons must be visible from the phone screen while being so simple as to fit 24 pixels. 

After designing a base of 49 icons, I approached my parents with the computer. Because these icons are supposed to be as easily recognizable as possible by people who are much more likely to need medical help than young people, that’s where I wanted to practice recognition.

The icons my parents chose, I marked in red, and it was these that I dealt with first to adjust them for complete understanding. It turned out that after the changes related to older people, young people also mostly had no problem recognizing these icons.

The research process of icon design for Figma

But I couldn’t leave my research on older people. Therefore, we started significant research in Applover! The course of the study was as follows.

  • Recognition of dry icons at an appropriate distance.
  • Recognition of icons in context.

I marked icons that do not appear in any context and will be recognized as those with the highest degree of recognition. I recorded the highest degree as those above 75% for all subjects. Icons between 75% and 50% were given chances in the second study, i.e., the study in context. Those below 50% went to complete revision or rejection. 

The icons selected for the study were the most difficult to recognize, i.e. we did not study the clock icon, the usual calendar, or the off/on the button because we encounter these icons too often. We looked at the unusual ones.

We also studied the research group for their habits, familiarity with apps of this type, eye problems, etc. 

The result of this study was that ⅓ of the icons were retained, 1/3 were rejected, and 1/3 were given another chance.

Get your HealthTech Freebie Icon Pack!

The HealthTech Icon Pack is the perfect collection of icons for any healthcare-related user interface. It comes in four styles: linear, solid, duotone, and two-colour, and each of these provides its unique look and feel. With regular updates, you can be sure that your project will always have the latest and most remarkable icons!

Icon Pack is available for free here.