Usability Evaluation of a Mobile Ecological Interface Design Application for Diabetes Management

Abstract

Healthcare applications for small-screen mobile devices are becoming increasingly common for medical professionals and patients. Even so, usability issues including navigation and screen clutter remain a challenge. Ecological Interface Design (EID) was used to design a patient-oriented diabetes management display for Java-enabled mobile devices, making it one of the first mobile EID (mEID) applications. This paper presents a usability evaluation of the diabetes management application, which compares the mEID display to a modified taskbased display (mEID+Task). The mEID+Task display integrates functional task characteristics such as frequency and necessity; menu structure, item ordering, item labelling, and input scheme were varied. Results showed that normalised trial completion times were moderately faster in the mEID+Task display than in the mEID display, while no differences were observed in trial completion accuracy. Furthermore, the mEID+Task display received higher preference ratings than the mEID display alone. The findings suggest that the usability of mEID displays can be improved by incorporating a task-oriented approach.