| Literature DB >> 24567756 |
Marie-Luise Christ-Neumann1, Ana Escrich2, Alberto Anguita2, Holger Stenzhorn3, Marian Taylor4, Hena Ramay5, Stefan Rüping1, Christian Krauth6, Wolfgang Kuchinke6, Norbert Graf3, Simona Rossi5.
Abstract
Usability testing methods are nowadays integrated into the design and development of health-care software, and the need for usability in health-care information technology (IT) is widely accepted by clinicians and researchers. Usability assessment starts with the identification of specific objectives that need to be tested and continues with the definition of evaluation criteria and monitoring procedures before usability tests are performed to assess the quality of all services and tasks. Such a process is implemented in the p-medicine environment and gives feedback iteratively to all software developers in the project. GCP (good clinical practice) criteria require additional usability testing of the software. For the p-medicine project (www.p-medicine.eu), an extended usability concept (EUC) was developed. The EUC covers topics like ease of use, likeability, and usefulness, usability in trial centres characterised by a mixed care and research environment and by extreme time constraints, confidentiality, use of source documents, standard operating procedures (SOA), and quality control during data handling to ensure that all data are reliable and have been processed correctly in terms of accuracy, completeness, legibility, consistence, and timeliness. Here, we describe the p-medicine EUC, focusing on two of the many key tools: ObTiMA and the Ontology Annotator (OA).Entities:
Keywords: evaluation; good clinical practice; health care
Year: 2014 PMID: 24567756 PMCID: PMC3922651 DOI: 10.3332/ecancer.2014.399
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Ecancermedicalscience ISSN: 1754-6605
Figure 1.A short description of the functionality of the clinical tool ObTiMA as it can be seen from the portal (upper left corner) and from the test server (upper right corner and bottom panel).
Figure 2.A screenshot of the Ontology Annotator. The tool includes several canvases for graphically representing both the schema of the database to align, HDOT, and the mappings between views from both models.
Figure 3.Usability quality model as adopted in phase 1.
Figure 4.The development Loop highlights the iterative process usability testing and evaluation/modification of the tools.
Aspects that need to be covered by usability tests.
| Usability tests’ aspects |
| • Formulate evaluation criteria, verification procedures, and feedback report guidelines |
| • Coordinate validation activities |
| • Evaluate the developed software tools by testing functionalities, accessibility, respect of user needs, data integration, and execution times |
| • Verification of GCP (good clinical practice): |
| ✓ protection of human rights as a subject in clinical trial |
| ✓ standards on how clinical trials should be conducted |
| ✓ clinical audit: performance will be regularly reviewed to ensure scheduled activities will be properly executed |
Figure 5.The three columns of usability evaluation and their relation to system validation of p-medicine tools used in clinical trials.
| Issue (usage problem) | Answer from the designer |
|---|---|
| Mandatory fields should be better marked | Improved in the new version |
| Highlighting or emphasizing information | Improved in the new version |
| Better contrast of background to foreground colour | Enhanced in the new version |
| Missing legends | Inserted in the new version |
| Usual colours for green, red, etc. user has another understanding | Can be solved by the use of a legend |
| Missing reaction from the system, only refresh of the system is not the expected reaction | Improved system response in the new version |
| Reaction of the system not visible for the user— doing action once more resulting in double output | Improved system response in the new version |
| Missing action guided information—unable to enter input for surgery | Messages have been added on the interface in order to guide the user |
| Double clicking on a button → mistake by the system; only one click is possible—user has to login once more, not efficient | Bug fixed |
| Changes after save are not intuitive for the user, user need explanation | Improved communication in the new version |
| Issue (usage problem) | Answer from the designer |
|---|---|
| In which format to enter date of birth should be clear for the user | Added hints in the interface |
| Error message should help the user for clarification | Improved communication in the new version |
| Reactions of the system are not clear for the user | Improved communication in the new version |
| Language should be consistent, German or English, also the mouse documentation | For German users, all should be in German, |
| For the save action, the user should get a response from the system | Improved system response in the new version |
| For controlling the entered data a print button is essential | In the new version, the user can review the entered data |
| Coloured dots should be explained in a legend | Added legend |
| Double clicking on a button → mistake by the system | Fixed |
| Delete one incorrect input is impossible, should be explained | Fixed |
| Not completely satisfied because she could not click on surgery for entering data | Bug fixed |
| Issue (Usage Problem) | Answer from the designer |
|---|---|
| Portal screen uses too much space for the tool description | This has actually to do with the portal implementation and the way they access the OA tool. Discussions between the OA development team and the p-medicine portal developers will take place in order to optimize the visualization area of the OA, removing unnecessary parts (e.g., moving the OA description to a separate window) |
| HDOT module pop-up window is very unusable | Agreement to work on improving the HDOT module selection window was reached. Yes, I agree this must be improved. In the first place, the displaying of the available modules will be more compact and descriptive, and in alphabetical order. In the second place, a confirmation message that informs the user which modules have been activated will be included |
| Tool is unusable with small resolutions. This provokes several problems, as the hiding of classes in the HDOT window, of the need for scrolling from left to right when searching for a suitable relation in a view window | Make smaller buttons |
| Discuss about the possibility of providing two tool modes: one for large screens and one for small screens that reduces the font size and images | |
| Point out the ability to enlarge windows in the tutorial | |
| Search results are hard to review | Results will be displayed in alphabetical order, and HDOT element searches will be dynamic so the user gets better feedback of his actions |
| Non-standard button images | Replace button images with more standard icons |
HDOT: Health Data Ontology Trunk.
OA: Ontology Annotator.