A Tale of Two Inspection Methods: Comparing an eHealth Literacy and User Experience Checklist with Heuristic Evaluation.

Abstract

Adhering to user experience (UX) and eHealth literacy principles when developing consumer health information systems (HISs) can not only improve a user's experience but can also have implications on patient safety. Methods exist to explore these dimensions independently, but few methods are available for evaluating consumer (i.e., citizen) health information systems for their adherence to usability and eHealth literacy design principles simultaneously. In this paper, we compared two inspection (i.e., expert review) tools and identified the strengths and weaknesses of each. The findings from this comparison can assist researchers, consumer health information system developers, and evaluators choosing between the two alternatives. Moreover, our comparison revealed the shortcomings in both tools and the need for a novel, purpose-built tool that is more comprehensive than either of the existing tools that assess UX and eHealth literacy and more adequately address design guidelines for the mobile environment.