Web Usability, Software Usability and Real-World Usability
Most UI/usability/information designers/architects create various types of wireframes when we design. This article discusses the different types of wireframes and their pros and cons.
The article also shows good examples of diffferent types of wireframes and the final website design.
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A Pound of Cure: The federal government is about to spend big on healthcare IT. Too bad the medical industry has a vested interest in inefficiency.
Provocative article about the inability of the healthcare industry to move forward with critical software and technology upgrades. Worth a read.
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Yet another stumbling block in the ongoing struggle to build Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the effort to improve patient-doctor communication - people don’t know their own anatomy!!
A study of patients and members of the public has shown that most lack even basic knowledge of human anatomy. The research, featured in the open access journal BMC Family Practice, found that people were generally incapable of identifying the location of major organs, even if they were currently receiving relevant treatment.
The researchers are concerned about the potential problems these findings reveal in doctor-patient communication, with possible adverse effects on diagnosis and treatment outcomes. According to Weinman, “Recent evidence has shown that when doctors’ and patients’ vocabulary are matched, significant gains are found in patients’ overall satisfaction with the consultation as well as rapport, communication comfort and compliance intent”.
View the News Release and the Complete Study.
An interesting course on healthcare web strategies and usability. For more information, contact:
Lisa Neal Gualtieri, Ph.D.
Adjunct Clinical Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Blog on health: http://lisaneal.wordpress.com/
Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine, http://eLearnMag.org
Blog on education: http://blog.acm.org/elearn/
Phone: 781-861-7373
Email: lisa@acm.org
Web Strategies for Health Communication runs July 19-24, 2009. The course meets at the Tufts University School of Medicine campus in Boston from Sunday, July 19, from 5-8 p.m. and on Monday-Friday, July 20-24, from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. It is offered through the Health Communication Program at Tufts University School of Medicine.
Enroll in the Summer Institute at http://webstrategiesforhealth.com/. Registration costs $900 before June 19 and $1000 after.
Good academic article on using personas in product design
Interesting video on YouTube of Microsoft Surface and the healthcare application Amalga.
“Captured at HIMSS09, one of the core developers for Microsoft Amalga walks through the application. The health care industry has a complete aspect of new technologies and processes to see in the future. The PHR product Microsoft HealthVault is also featured.”
As a healthcare software professional, I see too much software that interferes with the doctor-patient relationship. This video shows that technology doesn’t have to be a barrier to communication in healthcare.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyp9xQUIzkA
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0t3gtpQr_E&feature=related
David Blumenthal (the new National Coordinator for Health IT) and Mark Leavitt (the chair of their certification commission) are suggesting in the Wall Street Journal (4/22/2009) that user experience be included in the certification criteria for electronic health records (EHRs) that will be eligible for $17 billion in federal incentive payments.
“The Certification Commission for Healthcare IT currently certifies EHR systems now available on the market, based on whether they are interoperable and have certain functions. However, Blumenthal said that having certain functions is not enough. He added, ‘We need to ensure that physicians can actually use it.’ CCHIT Chair Mark Leavitt said the group is considering a revision of the certification criteria to include users’ experiences.”
I’ve co-founded an medical software EMR company and have been a usability architect with UnitedHealth Group for the past 5 years. The national initiative is a good thing, but building usable healthcare software isn’t easy, never mind trying to certify or regulate healthcare software usability.
Your thoughts?
View article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027664223937475.html
Good summary of what is a “User Experience” expert. Read the follow-up comments and posts your own comments.
http://www.insideria.com/2008/12/what-makes-a-user-experience-e.html
A Pop-Up Ad That’s Less Annoying (NY Times, 12 Oct 2008)
- “In 2003, during the golden age of pop-up ads, the advertising research firm Dynamic Logic asked hundreds of people about over-content advertisements: ads that pop up from a Web page, lurk behind it or hover translucently over it like tiny digital storm clouds.”
Read the complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/technology/internet/13drill.html?_r=1
Who says you can’t improve on years of well-established tradition? Wal-Mart and Costco have adopted a new gallon-sized milk container that looks to save the companies lots of money. However, there may be some usability issues they’ve overlooked!
A New York Times article describes the following impressive improvements in business metrics:
* 180% higher utilization of coolers
* 125% better delivery truck productivity
* 50% increased storage space utilization
* 16% lower milk prices for the end consumer
However, customers are reporting that it is very difficult to pour milk from the containers, resulting in constant spilling and loss of milk.
Here’s the full scoop! Video included - New York Times, June 30, 2008
“Historically phone bills have been as bland as a tin of condensed soup but T-Mobile saw an opportunity to make its bills more valuable as a regular interface between its brand and its customers.”
Good article about improving the readability and usability of one of those things we take for granted as being difficult-to-use - the paper phone bills we get (or used to get before online billing) every month. The article discusses the importance of Information Design.
Read the article. Brought to you by The Design Council in the UK.
Nice article from Andy Rutledge, titled ”The Employable Web Designer. He describes the necessary skills and traits for a successful career in Web design. The article briefly addresses usability, but at least they are included as necessary skills:
Usability & Affordance – You must have an understanding of common Web usability issues and the characteristics of contextual affordance—and possess the ability to create, enhance, and exploit these things in design efforts.
Enjoy!
“A battle of ideas is going on inside your mind”
From the Economist.com, an interesting article about problem solving behavior”
“Until now, psychologists have assumed that when people make a guess, they make the most accurate guess that they can. Ask them to make a second and it should, by definition, be less accurate. If that were true, averaging the first and second guesses should decrease the accuracy. Yet Edward Vul at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harold Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, have revealed in a study just published in Psychological Science that the average of first and second guesses is indeed better than either guess on its own.”
Good article on the use of checklists in healthcare to reduce errors during surgery. Here’s a taste:
Wednesday, WHO officials said preliminary results show the checklist nearly doubled patients’ chances of receiving proven standards of surgical care and substantially reduced complications and deaths.
“It seems totally obvious,” Flum says. “They’ve been doing this in aviation for four decades, yet it’s been totally absent in health care because there’s no system to make sure it happens.”
Good historical article on how technology changes our lives and how we work. Very informative story about Friedrich Nietzsche, who bought a typewriter in 1882, and the changes that came about in his writing style as a result of using this new technology.
Similarly, the author, Nicholas Carr, discusses how Internet technology, such as Google, has changed the way users read and use the Web.
Fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about reading/browsing online vs. paper. He uses Jakob Nielsen’s writings as examples and goes from there.
Worth a read on Slate (Aricle by Michael Agger).
Good article in the NY Times about how technology companies are starting to deal with the loss of productivity from too much technology - e-mail, cellphones and instant messaging - being the biggest distractions.
Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and IBM, are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.
Here’s the NYT article.
Sometimes you have to protect users from themselves so they do no harm. Here’s a real-world example of creating a faux user experience that helps users remain safe and at home. Here’s an example:
There’s a bus stop located outside the Benrath Senior Centre in Dusseldorf. People occasionally walk up to the stop and stand there, waiting for a bus, but a bus never comes. In fact, the stop is on no bus route. It’s a faux bus stop, purposefully created by the local department of transportation as a lure designed to deceive Alzheimer’s patients from the senior centre.
View the The Bus Stop to Nowhere page on museumofhoaxes.com.
More advice about improving the design and usability of your website. Major categories include:
Practitioners can always use good advice. David Crow, usability adviser at Microsoft Canada, and Jay Goldman, president of Radiant Core in Toronto, speaking at the Free Software and Open Source Symposium at Seneca College in Toronto last month, offered a 12-step program for getting back on track, along with some recommended reading.
View the article