Medical Decision Aid Software Case Study

The “Goals of Care” decision aid is a research project from WPI and UMASS - Chenfor families of ICU patients with acute brain trauma or stroke. This project investigates the usability of this medical research deliverable.


Skills Applied:

Market research, User research, User flow, Wireframing, Visual design, Prototyping and User testing.

Summary

This project presents data resulting from a User Experience research initiative – both generative and evaluative - where the online information sharing process was analyzed while using a web-based Decision Aid by a relative (surrogate) of a patient suffering from a Traumatic Brain Injury and unable to make medical decisions for themselves.

Study Design

Figure 1. This project's study design

Research Objectives

To investigate the impact of content-presentation formats on user experience and user information processing behavior when viewing a web-based decision aid.

Figure 2. Project Objectives

Personas & User Journeys

We developed three different personas to represent the different case scenerios with the understanding that these diseases can affect anybody.

Figure 3. Project Personas

With all the insights from different Personas, we chose two of the personas and created their corresponding journey maps to identify their needs, pain points.

Figure 4. Project Personas' Journey

User Research Methods

To measure the usability of this experience, we looked at both the Qualitative and Quantitative Study. These data are useful to evaluate the interaction between machine and human as well as the interface quality.

Figure 5. Research Methods

To conduct this research, we use a specific test scenerio and interview protocol as this topic can be sentitive to participants and could cause emotional distress. Below is an overview about our research methods.

Figure 6. Research Methods
Figure 7. Research Methods

Data Analysis Process

Figure 8. Data Analysis Process

The platform received an average System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 76.67 out of 100, which indicates good acceptability and acceptable usability. This indicator presents that the app is satisfactory, functionally usable, and can fit into the context of decision aid.

Figure 9. System Usability Scale (SUS) Data Comparision
Figure 10. System Usability Scale (SUS) Data Summary

Results

Advantages of the website

Disadvantages of the website

Additional finding

Conclusion

Overall, the decision aid have a good user experience, it could communicate information effectively and it is easy to understand. The decision aid has adequate information but need improvement. Multimedia can somehow facilitate user experience and information processing.

Recommendations

  • Including multiple language or with translator in the decision aid.
  • Interview doctors to collect feedback from different perspective.
  • Need to define what is “Quality of Life”?
  • Provide more statistical data and examples about how other people did in their situations, what is their success rate.
  • Giving more introduction and description at the beginning.
  • A chatbot or help function to assist users with the website.
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