title: Heuristic Evaluation of a mHealth Diabetes Self-Management System Using Disease Specific Patient Profiles.
abstract: Patient-centeredness is an important concept in diabetes treatment. We modified Nielsen's expert heuristic evaluation method addressing common gaps: a patient perspective and variability in findings. Two expert, dual-domain evaluators referred to validated patient profiles (mild, moderate, severe diabetes) when conducting uniform evaluation processes on a diabetes mHealth system. Evaluators found 103 usability problems and 224 heuristic violations. For 69% of the problems, the profiles had an effect on severity ratings. "Consistency and Standards" (n = 57) and "Match between the System and Real World" (n = 55) violations dominated at 50%. The overall system severity rating was major. Severity was highest for a severe diabetic profile due to likely visual issues (crowded elements), cognitive concerns (remembering many steps) and for insufficient medication information. Interrater reliability was respectable at Kappa = 0.67. Our novel evaluation method represents one way of improving on a usability expert technique making it more patient-centered with less individual evaluator variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Mattias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Georgsson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Staggers
mesh_terms: D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy; D005104:Expert Testimony / Q000379:methods; D000066506:Heuristics; D006801:Humans; D008499:Medical Records / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D063731:Mobile Applications / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000072638:Patient Portals / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012648:Self Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016896:Treatment Outcome