Evaluating the usability of an interactive, bi-lingual, touchscreen-enabled breastfeeding educational programme: application of Nielson’s heuristics

• Main Authors: Ashish Joshi, Douglas M Puricelli Perin, Chioma Amadi, Kate Trout
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT 2015-03-01
• Series: Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics
• Subjects: breastfeeding, educational programme, heuristics, human–computer interaction
• Online Access: http://hijournal.bcs.org/index.php/jhi/article/view/71
• ISSN: 2058-4555; 2058-4563

<p><strong>Background: </strong>Usability challenges have to be met in an interactive computer program development and should meet all users’ needs. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>Objective:</strong> The study purpose was to conduct heuristic evaluation of an interactive, bilingual touch screen enabled breastfeeding educational program for Hispanic women living in rural settings.</p><p><strong>Methods:</strong> Two usability experts used Nielsen’s heuristics while reviewing the user interface in May 2013 using principles of Nielson’s Heuristics. Nielson’s heuristics are a set of usability engineering principles developed to identify issues in user interface design and involves analysis of the interface. The heuristic evaluations were carried out in the <em>interface, program sections, and interactive educational modules</em>. A total of 271 screens were evaluated and included: interface (n=5), program sections (n=223) and educational content (n=43).</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> A total of 97 violations were identified and were mostly related to interface (8violations/5screens) and program components (89violations/266screens). The most common violations reported were recognition rather than recall (62%, n=60), consistency and standards (14%, n=14), and match between the system and real world (9%, n= 9). Majority of the violations had minor usability issues (73%, n=71). The only catastrophic violation reported was due to the visibility of system status in the assessment modules.<strong></strong></p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The results demonstrated that the system was more consistent with Nielsen’s usability heuristics.</p><p><strong> </strong></p>