User Goals Extraction for a mhealth-based Medication Management System for Individuals with Visual Impairment

Abstract

Background: Prevalence of visual impairment is increasing all around the world and this impairment makes the medication management process more complicated. According to literature, Technology, particularly mobile technology has a significant impact on both medication adherence and improving quality of life for people with visual impairment. Due to aforementioned facts, the researchers decided to identify the user’s goals for a mHealth-based medication management system for visually impaired individuals to help the developers to design and develop a medication management system for visually impaired individuals considering to improve their medication adherence and also preserve their independence. Methods: A goal directed approach, introduced by Cooper, has been used in order to extract the goals of visually impaired users who would employ a medication management system. One the most important concepts of this method are designing personas. The needed data for designing personas were extracted from two literature reviews and interviews with 14 visually impaired individuals and three experts of this area. Therefore the personas’ different goals were defined. Results: As the results of this study, three personas were designed according to the extracted data and three categories of user goals including experience goals, end goals and life goals were determined for this system. Conclusion: This study could help the researchers and developers to design and develop an appropriate digital product for people with visual impairment, in order to increase their medication adherence. In addition, the findings of this study could help the policy makers of different areas to increase the quality of life for the people with visual impairment by eliminating the barriers of independent and effective medication adherence.