Perceive, Prioritize, Act: Eliciting Alert Design Requirements for Fast-Paced Medical Work

Designing appropriate clinical alerts for fast-paced medical teams operating under intense cognitive, physical, and time pressure remains an underexplored challenge. We address this gap in the context of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) through participatory design workshops and formative user testing with EMS clinicians to elicit alert design requirements and preferences for high-pressure, hands-busy care. Clinicians emphasized the need for (1) tiered alert hierarchies grounded in clinical criticality to manage alert burden; (2) multimodal cues that make urgency readily perceivable (e.g., color differentiation, distinct notification sounds, and subtle animation for unresolved critical alerts); and (3) concise, glanceable alerts with on-demand details to support rapid interpretation without cluttering the interface. We also identify sociotechnical considerations for using alerts in the field (e.g., documentation timing, environmental constraints, and team-based access). We conclude by synthesizing design implications and recurring tensions for alert presentation in emergency care.