<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>The popularity of telemedical applications has been increasing noticeably in recent years. Easy access to a variety of software products makes contemporary users concentrate not only on functionalities but also on the design of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) – its usefulness, ease of use, and intuitiveness. The objective of this study was to evaluate the GUI quality of selected telemedical applications dedicated to depressed patients and doctors providing medical care for this group of patients. Another aim of the paper was to propose and check assessment criteria applied to the evaluation experiment. To achieve this objective, the case study was based on two methods: expert analysis and cognitive walkthrough. The expert analysis study was conducted on three groups of users: user experience specialists, patients, and clinicians. Although the expert analysis method is usually dedicated to GUI design specialists, in this study, we also applied it to patient and physician groups. The results showed that there were no statistical differences between assessments carried out by those three groups of users. Applied testing criteria were revised with Nielsen’s heuristics. The proposed criteria helped to uncover many usability problems in several different areas during user tests. Further studies might be performed in order to strengthen accuracy and for completion of the proposed expert analysis evaluation criteria. However, our results show that the criteria we used seem to be robust enough to apply to both expert and end-user evaluations. Furthermore, multiple evaluation based on two different methods presented with better results, allowing not only problem identification but also verification.</p></abstract>

The popularity of telemedical applications has been increasing noticeably in recent years. Easy access to a variety of software products makes contemporary users concentrate not only on functionalities but also on the design of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) – its usefulness, ease of use, and intuitiveness. The objective of this study was to evaluate the GUI quality of selected telemedical applications dedicated to depressed patients and doctors providing medical care for this group of patients. Another aim of the paper was to propose and check assessment criteria applied to the evaluation experiment. To achieve this objective, the case study was based on two methods: expert analysis and cognitive walkthrough. The expert analysis study was conducted on three groups of users: user experience specialists, patients, and clinicians. Although the expert analysis method is usually dedicated to GUI design specialists, in this study, we also applied it to patient and physician groups. The results showed that there were no statistical differences between assessments carried out by those three groups of users. Applied testing criteria were revised with Nielsen’s heuristics. The proposed criteria helped to uncover many usability problems in several different areas during user tests. Further studies might be performed in order to strengthen accuracy and for completion of the proposed expert analysis evaluation criteria. However, our results show that the criteria we used seem to be robust enough to apply to both expert and end-user evaluations. Furthermore, multiple evaluation based on two different methods presented with better results, allowing not only problem identification but also verification.

A Study of Telemedical Applications Based on User Experience

Department of Public Health, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland

Research Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Hasselt University, Belgium

Institute of Computer Science, Lublin University of Technology, Poland

Department of Pathomorphology, Student’s Pathomorphology Group, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Collegium Medicum, Poland

Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"A Study of Telemedical Applications Based on User Experience"}

The popularity of telemedical applications has been increasing noticeably in recent years. Easy access to a variety of software products makes contemporary...

A Study of Telemedical Applications Based on User Experience

Published Online: Jan 06, 2016

Page range: 195 - 210

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/slgr-2015-0050

© 2015 Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.