title: Comparison of heuristic and cognitive walkthrough usability evaluation methods for evaluating health information systems.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  There are several user-based and expert-based usability evaluation methods that may perform differently according to the context in which they are used. The objective of this study was to compare 2 expert-based methods, heuristic evaluation (HE) and cognitive walkthrough (CW), for evaluating usability of health care information systems.
  
  
  METHODS
  Five evaluators independently evaluated a medical office management system using HE and CW. We compared the 2 methods in terms of the number of identified usability problems, their severity, and the coverage of each method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total, 156 problems were identified using the 2 methods. HE identified a significantly higher number of problems related to the "satisfaction" attribute ( P  = .002). The number of problems identified using CW concerning the "learnability" attribute was significantly higher than those identified using HE ( P  = .005). There was no significant difference between the number of problems identified by HE, based on different usability attributes ( P  = .232). Results of CW showed a significant difference between the number of problems related to usability attributes ( P  < .0001). The average severity of problems identified using CW was significantly higher than that of HE ( P  < .0001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study showed that HE and CW do not differ significantly in terms of the number of usability problems identified, but they differ based on the severity of problems and the coverage of some usability attributes. The results suggest that CW would be the preferred method for evaluating systems intended for novice users and HE for users who have experience with similar systems. However, more studies are needed to support this finding.
authors: Medical Informatics Research Center, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.|Department of Health Information Management and Technology, Faculty of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
authors: Reza
authors: R
authors: Khajouei
authors: Regional Knowledge Hub and World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for HIV Surveillance, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
authors: Misagh
authors: M
authors: Zahiri Esfahani
authors: Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
authors: Yunes
authors: Y
authors: Jahani
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D063005:Health Information Systems; D000066506:Heuristics; D006801:Humans; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: cognitive walkthrough; comparison; health information systems; heuristic evaluation; user-computer interface