Scenario-based user testing to guide consumer health informatics design

For consumer health informatics (CHI) interventions to successfully aid laypeople, the interventions must fit and support their health work. This paper outlines a scenario-based human factors assessment of a disease management CHI intervention. Two student users undertook a patient use case and another user followed a nurse use case. Each user completed pre-specified tasks over a ten-day trial, recorded challenges encountered while utilizing the intervention, and logged daily time spent on each task. Results show the scenario-based user testing approach helps effectively and systematically assess potential physical, cognitive, and macroergonomic challenges for end-users, rate the severity of the challenges, and identify mediation strategies for each challenge. In particular, scenario-based user testing aids in identifying challenges that would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect in a laboratory-based usability study. With this information, CHI interventions can be re-designed and/or supplemented, making the intervention more closely fit end-users' work.