User-centered design of graphical user interfaces for telemedical robotic systems: development and usability study

We explore an approach to develop telemedical Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) using User-centered Design (UCD) methods. In contrast with prior work that emphasizes system integration, we center on the GUI as the clinician's primary interface.

In a user-centered, two-stage process, we developed a modular and generalized GUI architecture and adapted it to a Robotic Ultrasound System (RUSS) and a robotic Tension Pneumothorax (tPTX) system. The GUIs were iteratively co-designed and evaluated with physicians using mixed methods (System Usability Scale (SUS), end-user-adapted heuristics, eye-tracking).

The results of the study confirm the benefits of UCD methods for the development of GUIs for telemedical robotic systems. Repeated exposure increased efficiency across tasks and scenarios, indicating the usability (training effect) and consistency (cross-scenario learning transfer) of a modular GUI architecture. The mixed-methods design provided complementary insights via triangulation, helped to analyze outliers, and revealed additional design issues not captured by one method alone.

A user-centered GUI development process with multiple evaluation rounds can improve the usability of telemedical robotic systems for medical professionals. Our findings show that a modular architecture can facilitate the transfer of training effects across implementations and clinical use cases by preserving high-level structures and interaction concepts.