Nielsen's Usability Heuristics Research Articles

Performance Analysis of Meta-UI on Membatik Mixed Reality Application Using Nielsen’s Heuristic Method

Moving beyond immersive learning, the rapid advancement of Mixed Reality (MR) technology is diversifying its applications across various sectors, including education, healthcare, and corporate training. However, standalone MR devices pose challenges related to performance and visualization realism. In this study, we focused on enhancing immersive learning by optimizing the User Interface (UI) of an MR batik-making application using the Meta-UI principle. This research aimed to assess the impact of these UI approaches on user satisfaction, measured through Nielsen's usability methods. User feedback was collected and analyzed to refine the UI design. Nielsen's usability heuristics guided the evaluation of UI attributes such as clarity, efficiency, and user satisfaction. The utilization of Meta-UI demonstrated a notable increase in user satisfaction. Nielsen's usability guidelines indicated ratings ranging from 3.93 (good) to 4.30 (very good), signifying users' positive perceptions of learnability, efficiency, memorability, error handling, and overall satisfaction within the MR batik-making application. This research also addressed these issues by meticulously optimizing 3D assets within MR applications. The results indicated that the application's CPU utilization is around 22%, attributed to its startup processes, resource allocation, and any initial computations it performed. However, the application continued to run within 4 GB of installed memory with the network bandwidth usage at 0.27 Mbps. User comfortability was enhanced, which is evident in improved ratings for importance and satisfaction levels (4.26 and 4.16, respectively) in the MR application.

Study on the Smart phone Interface Design to Improve Usability -Focused on Jakob Nielsen's Usability Heuristics-

Study on the Smart phone Interface Design to Improve Usability -Focused on Jakob Nielsen's Usability Heuristics-

Improving quality of care for patients receiving care through telehealth in the time of COVID-19 global pandemic and beyond: HCI-based leading indicators for virtual visits

The COVID-19 pandemic expedited the growing rate of reliance on telehealth, as it provided a safer option for patients to seek the care they need and avoid potential negative consequences of being exposed to the COVID-19 virus. The aim of this study is to develop a series of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)-based leading indicators to proactively analyze and evaluate the user interface in telehealth and virtual visits. Building on Nielsen's usability heuristics and mapping them to the six aspects of quality of care introduced by the Institute of Medicine, we identified the design features that had the highest impact on the quality of care and developed a list of leading indicators for each feature. Further, we developed corresponding checklists for each leading indicator to evaluate the features of the user. Beyond the benefits of telehealth for both patients and healthcare providers during atypical circumstances, the changes prompted by the COVID-19 public health emergency have possibly altered the position of telehealth to the point that communicating through video and audio has become the new normal. Therefore, the importance of designing an interface to facilitate user interaction with the system and consequently with one another is of utmost importance.

An Evaluation Study of an Electronic Whiteboard System for Nursing Care in the Emergence Unit

The main objective of this research is to evaluate a task and alert management system denominated SHAVI (SHAred VIew), developed to be used by the Nursing team of the Emergency Unit of a University Hospital located in southern Brazil. The system was developed as a resource for managing patients clinical data and warning signs of clinical deterioration during urgency and emergency care. The research is characterized as exploratory and descriptive, with data collection carried out in the field with 21 participants, including students and professionals working in the emergency sector, through the application of a questionnaire consisting of 48 questions. The usability and user acceptance of the tool was mainly verified based on Nielsen's Usability Heuristics and the Technology Acceptance Model. The evaluation and user participation contributes to identify problems and make corrections before putting the system into use, contributing to its adoption and acceptance.The evaluation reveled that the system has great potential for use and can be considered a safety mechanism for monitoring patients in the emergence unit, but to be adopted, needs to be integrated with other systems used in the Hospital and to train first-time users.

Investigating the Impact of Usability on Energy Efficiency of Web-based Personal Health Records.

Usability plays an important role in eHealth applications for their widespread adoption. These software systems have been studied in depth in the literature from this perspective. However, the energy consumption of information systems in the eHealth domain lacks comprehensive research. In this paper, the relationship between the energy consumption of the main components of a PC and the usability evaluations of graphical user interfaces (GUI) were studied in client applications. For this purpose, personal health records (PHR) were used as a case study. A set of 4 web-based PHRs were evaluated with the performance of 20 common tasks in the aforementioned systems. The usability evaluations were carried out by 4 experts. A total of 8 heuristics particularly designed for electronic health record systems and based on the Nielsen usability heuristics were employed. The instantaneous energy values of the power supply and the monitor were collected with an energy consumption measuring equipment. As a result, the following significant correlations were found. In NoMoreClipboard between the Memory heuristic and the power supply (rs = 0.495, p = 0.044), and the Minimalist heuristic and the monitor (rs = - 0.513, p = 0.035). In PatientsLikeMe between the Minimalist heuristic and the power supply (rs = - 0.479, p = 0.083), as well as in the Error heuristic and the power supply (rs = - 0.638, p = 0.014). Finally, in Health Companion between the Match heuristic and the power supply (rs = - 0.481, p = 0.043), and the Error heuristic and the power supply again (rs = - 0.602, p = 0.008). Apart from that, the tasks were divided into those with excellent and fair usability. Those tasks with high usability scores were evaluated to detect whether they also had low energy consumption during task performance. Significant differences were found in PatientsLikeMe with respect to the Error heuristic and the power supply (212.39 ± 18.85W). Significant differences were also found in Health Companion with respect to the Match heuristic and the power supply (199.91 ± 7.19W). The results were discussed to reveal the fundamentals of how implementing usability can impact on energy costs when running client applications.

Designing and usability assessing an electronic personal health record for patients with chronic heart failure in a developing country

BackgroundChronic heart failure (CHF) is one of the serious chronic progressive conditions with the highest incidence, mortality, and disability so that its complications can be controlled and prevented through self-care behaviors. An electronic personal health record (e-PHR) can increase patients' understanding of their level of health to improve it. ObjectiveThis study aimed to design an e-PHR system and assess its usability for patients with CHF. MethodsThis applied developmental research was conducted in 2019. Based on the literature review, a questionnaire was designed to assess and determine the data elements required for the e-PHR system of patients with CHF by 14 cardiologists and 40 nurses employed at Cardiology departments of hospitals in Iran. Then the system was designed and developed using the PHP programing language and MySQL database server and implemented on a web server. The system's usability was assessed by three cardiologists and three patients using the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire and five health information technology experts using Nielsen's usability heuristics. ResultsThe experts approved the system design elements, including 225 data elements, such as identity information, vital signs, diet and liquids, health records, symptoms, medications, vaccination, tests, social records, physical activities, sexual activities, and travel. The most important elements in this system were social records (98.52%) and physical activities (97.53%), whereas the least important element was vaccination (80%). Patients and cardiologists gave 83.33 and 85 SUS scores to the designed system, respectively. In other words, they evaluated the system usability at a "good" level. Based on Nielsen's usability heuristics, the system had 30 unique problems, with overall average severity of 2.39. ConclusionThe designed e-PHR system for CHF patients obtained good and satisfactory results in usability assessment. Therefore, this web-based system can be easily employed for the condition management of patients with CHF.

Developing a Computer Application to Prepare Social Workers for Integrated Health Care: Integrated Healthcare (Version 1.0).

Integrated health care (IHC) is a proposed change to the U.S. health care system to address health care disparities for individuals with mental and physical health conditions. Computer applications may provide an effective strategy to prepare social workers for the transition to IHC. An Internet-based tool, Integrated Healthcare (Version 1.0) was developed and tested through rapid prototyping to access knowledge required for behavioral health providers to practice in IHC settings. Two focus groups (N = 5, N = 7) and individual interviews (N = 5) were conducted with social work professors and students. Nielsen's usability heuristics were used to evaluate data from focus groups and interviews, and changes were incorporated in development. The final computer application is an introduction to IHC concepts, reinforces the integrated nature of physical and behavioral health, and puts evidence-based knowledge at the point of care.

Applying User-Centered Design Methods to the Development of an mHealth Application for Use in the Hospital Setting by Patients and Care Partners.

Developing an optimized and user-friendly mHealth application for patients and family members in the hospital environment presents unique challenges given the diverse patient population and patients' various states of well-being. This article describes user-centered design methods and results for developing the patient and family facing user interface and functionality of MySafeCare, a safety reporting tool for hospitalized patients and their family members. Individual and group usability sessions were conducted with specific testing scenarios for participants to follow to test the usability and functionality of the tool. Participants included patients, family members, and Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) members. Engagement rounds were also conducted on study units and lessons learned provided additional information to the usability work. Usability results were aligned with Nielsen's Usability Heuristics. Eleven patients and family members and 25 PFAC members participated in usability testing and over 250 patients and family members were engaged during research team rounding. Specific themes resulting from the usability testing sessions influenced the changes made to the user interface design, workflow functionality, and terminology. User-centered design should focus on workflow functionality, terminology, and user interface issues for mHealth applications. These themes illustrated issues aligned with four of Nielsen's Usability Heuristics: match between system and the real world, consistency and standards, flexibility and efficiency of use, and aesthetic and minimalist design. We identified workflow and terminology issues that may be specific to the use of an mHealth application focused on safety and used by hospitalized patients and their families.

Heuristic Evaluation of an Interactive Television System to Facilitate Elders Home Care

This paper presents a usability evaluation of the design of a home care system for older adults, named iTVCare; the evaluation was held early on the design process in order to assess potential problems. The evaluation consisted on individually expert evaluations of its compliance with Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics for interaction design. Heuristics, were an efficient method for finding problems with the system and have headed to significant improvements in the software platform.

Usability of a Patient Education and Motivation Tool Using Heuristic Evaluation

BackgroundComputer-mediated educational applications can provide a self-paced, interactive environment to deliver educational content to individuals about their health condition. These programs have been used to deliver health-related information about a variety of topics, including breast cancer screening, asthma management, and injury prevention. We have designed the Patient Education and Motivation Tool (PEMT), an interactive computer-based educational program based on behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic learning theories. The tool is designed to educate users and has three key components: screening, learning, and evaluation.ObjectiveThe objective of this tutorial is to illustrate a heuristic evaluation using a computer-based patient education program (PEMT) as a case study. The aims were to improve the usability of PEMT through heuristic evaluation of the interface; to report the results of these usability evaluations; to make changes based on the findings of the usability experts; and to describe the benefits and limitations of applying usability evaluations to PEMT.MethodsPEMT was evaluated by three usability experts using Nielsen’s usability heuristics while reviewing the interface to produce a list of heuristic violations with severity ratings. The violations were sorted by heuristic and ordered from most to least severe within each heuristic.ResultsA total of 127 violations were identified with a median severity of 3 (range 0 to 4 with 0 = no problem to 4 = catastrophic problem). Results showed 13 violations for visibility (median severity = 2), 38 violations for match between system and real world (median severity = 2), 6 violations for user control and freedom (median severity = 3), 34 violations for consistency and standards (median severity = 2), 11 violations for error severity (median severity = 3), 1 violation for recognition and control (median severity = 3), 7 violations for flexibility and efficiency (median severity = 2), 9 violations for aesthetic and minimalist design (median severity = 2), 4 violations for help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors (median severity = 3), and 4 violations for help and documentation (median severity = 4).ConclusionWe describe the heuristic evaluation method employed to assess the usability of PEMT, a method which uncovers heuristic violations in the interface design in a quick and efficient manner. Bringing together usability experts and health professionals to evaluate a computer-mediated patient education program can help to identify problems in a timely manner. This makes this method particularly well suited to the iterative design process when developing other computer-mediated health education programs. Heuristic evaluations provided a means to assess the user interface of PEMT.

Making security usable: Are things improving?

Given the increased focus on the need for usable security, it is now to be hoped that the issue will receive greater attention in new software releases. Unfortunately, however, there is still evidence to suggest that usable security receives insufficient consideration when the related features are presented in the context of larger applications. As an illustration of this claim, the paper examines how the security-related features have evolved within new releases of Internet Explorer and Word, and identifies that although there have been some improvements when compared to earlier versions, there are also aspects that will represent new or ongoing problems for users. Examples of such problems are highlighted in a number of security-related interfaces from both applications, with the use of technical terminology and/or a lack of accompanying help being amongst the frequent concerns. Nielsen's usability heuristics are then used as the basis for a summary-level evaluation, to illustrate how the identified issues also contravene good practice in user interface design.

Information architecture: Data‐driven design: Using web analytics to validate heuristics system

Information architecture: Data‐driven design: Using web analytics to validate heuristics system