Developing a usability evaluation tool to assess the patient room bathroom.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Design
• Human Factors Engineering
• Usability Testing

Background:

• Hospital bathrooms are critical but often pose risks like patient falls and nurse dissatisfaction.
• Limited research exists on the efficiency, safety, and user satisfaction of hospital bathroom design.
• A lack of human factors guidelines hinders architects and designers in creating usable bathroom spaces.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create an accessible and affordable tool for identifying patient bathroom usability problems during the design phase.
• To enable improvements in bathroom design before construction and implementation.

Main Methods:

• Adapted the heuristic evaluation technique, commonly used in software usability.
• Gathered input through literature reviews, nurse interviews, and focus groups.
• Developed problem categories from transcribed interviews and focus groups to form the basis of the evaluation tool.

Main Results:

• Identified and refined six major heuristic categories with detailed subcategories and exemplar questions.
• The tool allows evaluators to assess adherence to guidelines, document issues, and rate problem severity.
• Iterative design and refinement ensured parsimonious categories for efficient evaluation.

Conclusions:

• The developed Bathroom Heuristic Evaluation is a "discount" usability tool.
• It effectively assesses hospital bathrooms during design for significant usability flaws.
• Facilitates necessary design alterations prior to final product development, enhancing safety and usability.