A Survey on Usability Evaluation in Digital Health and Potential Efficiency Issues

Bilal Maqbool, Farzaneh Karegar, Sebastian Herold

2024

Abstract

Context: Usability is a major factor in the acceptance of digital health (DH) solutions. Problem: Despite its importance, usability experts have expressed concerns about the insufficient attention given to usability evaluation in practice, indicating potential efficiency problems of common evaluation methods in the healthcare domain. Objectives: This research paper aimed to analyse industrial usability evaluation practices in digital health to identify potential threats to the efficiency of their application. Method: To this end, we conducted an online survey of 144 usability experts experienced in usability evaluations for digital health applications. The survey questions aimed to explore the prevalence of techniques applied, and the participants’ familiarity and perceptions regarding tools and techniques. Results: The prevalently applied techniques might impose efficiency problems in common scenarios in digital health. Participant recruitment is considered time-consuming and selecting the most appropriate evaluation method for a given context is perceived difficult. The results highlight a lack of utilisation of tools automating aspects of usability evaluation. Conclusions: A more widespread adoption of tools for automating usability evaluation activities seems desirable as well as guidelines for selecting evaluation techniques in a given context. We furthermore recommend to explore AI-based solutions to address the problem of involving targeted user groups that are difficult to access for usability evaluations.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Maqbool B., Karegar F. and Herold S. (2024). A Survey on Usability Evaluation in Digital Health and Potential Efficiency Issues. In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF; ISBN 978-989-758-688-0, SciTePress, pages 63-76. DOI: 10.5220/0012344400003657

in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf24,
author={Bilal Maqbool and Farzaneh Karegar and Sebastian Herold},
title={A Survey on Usability Evaluation in Digital Health and Potential Efficiency Issues},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF},
year={2024},
pages={63-76},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012344400003657},
isbn={978-989-758-688-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF
TI - A Survey on Usability Evaluation in Digital Health and Potential Efficiency Issues
SN - 978-989-758-688-0
AU - Maqbool B.
AU - Karegar F.
AU - Herold S.
PY - 2024
SP - 63
EP - 76
DO - 10.5220/0012344400003657
PB - SciTePress