Ashish Joshi1, MD, MPH; Mohit Arora1, MS; Liwei Dai2, PhD; Kathleen
Price1, MS, RN; Lisa Vizer1, MS; Andrew Sears1, PhD
1Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County,
Baltimore, MD, USA
2Usability Engineering Group, Xerox Corporation, Baltimore, MD, USA
Corresponding Author:
Ashish Joshi, MD, MPH
Department of Information Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle, ITE 437
Baltimore, MD 21250
USA
Phone: +1 410 455 8837
Fax: +1 410 455 1217
Email: asjoshi [at] umbc.edu
ABSTRACT
Background: Computer-mediated educational applications can provide a
self-paced, interactive environment to deliver educational content to individuals
about their health condition. These programs have been used to deliver health
-related information about a variety of topics, including breast cancer screening,
asthma management, and injury prevention. We have designed the Patient
Education and Motivation Tool (PEMT), an interactive computer-based
educational program based on behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic learning
theories. The tool is designed to educate users and has three key components:
screening, learning, and evaluation.
Objective: The objective of this tutorial is to illustrate a heuristic evaluation
using a computer-based patient education program (PEMT) as a case study.
The aims were to improve the usability of PEMT through heuristic evaluation of
the interface; to report the results of these usability evaluations; to make
changes based on the findings of the usability experts; and to describe the
benefits and limitations of applying usability evaluations to PEMT.
Methods: PEMT was evaluated by three usability experts using Nielsen’s
usability heuristics while reviewing the interface to produce a list of heuristic
violations with severity ratings. The violations were sorted by heuristic and
ordered from most to least severe within each heuristic.
Results: A total of 127 violations were identified with a median severity of 3
(range 0 to 4 with 0 = no problem to 4 = catastrophic problem). Results
showed 13 violations for visibility (median severity = 2), 38 violations for match
between system and real world (median severity = 2), 6 violations for user
control and freedom (median severity = 3), 34 violations for consistency and
standards (median severity = 2), 11 violations for error severity (median severity
= 3), 1 violation for recognition and control (median severity = 3), 7 violations
for flexibility and efficiency (median severity = 2), 9 violations for aesthetic and
minimalist design (median severity = 2), 4 violations for help users recognize,
diagnose, and recover from errors (median severity = 3), and 4 violations for
help and documentation (median severity = 4).
Conclusion: We describe the heuristic evaluation method employed to
assess the usability of PEMT, a method which uncovers heuristic violations
in the interface design in a quick and efficient manner. Bringing together
usability experts and health professionals to evaluate a computer-mediated
patient education program can help to identify problems in a timely manner.
This makes this method particularly well suited to the iterative design process
when developing other computer-mediated health education programs.
Heuristic evaluations provided a means to assess the user interface of PEMT.
(J Med Internet Res 2009;11(4):e47)
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