A User-Centered Approach to Design a Mobile Application for Chronic Pain Management

Abstract

This paper presents a user-centered approach for the design/re-design of a mobile application for chronic pain management, with a focus on chronic low back pain, sometimes referred to as "invisible disability". Within the framework of a multidisciplinary project involving physicians, patients and computer scientists, the work presented here describes firstly an identification and representation process of the needs/expectations of the users of such an application (patients/physicians), based on a data-driven persona development method and, secondly, an evaluation process of the user experience (UX) of the current version of the application, using among others usability tests. The aim of the approach is to establish (re-)design guidelines in order to improve this kind of application.