Development and evaluation of a co-designed website for delivering interactive self-directed cardiac rehabilitation

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs are crucial for patient recovery.
• Delivering CR through accessible digital platforms is an emerging area.
• Co-design methodologies ensure user-centered development of digital health tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report the development and evaluation of a co-designed website for interactive, self-directed cardiac rehabilitation.
• To assess the usability and user experience of the developed CR website.

Main Methods:

• A multi-method user experience design framework was employed for co-design and usability testing.
• Thematic analysis of participant feedback guided website development.
• The System Usability Scale (SUS) measured user perceptions of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.

Main Results:

• The co-designed CR website showed improved usability scores post-development.
• Key usability aspects like ease of use, function integration, and consistency significantly improved.
• Participant ratings of the website's excellence increased substantially after usability testing.

Conclusions:

• The co-designed cardiac rehabilitation website demonstrated enhanced usability through an iterative development process.
• The study successfully integrated user feedback to refine the digital CR intervention.
• Future research will focus on evaluating the clinical effectiveness of this digital CR tool.