Persona-Based Design for Personal Health Information Management Systems
Emilija Stojmenova, Dejan Dinevski, Jože Guna, MatevÅ ⁄ PogaÄnik · 2013
The field that represents the promotion of ICT for supporting, improving or enabling the health and healthcare systems, is widely known as e-health. Various studies ([1]and [2]) have concluded that ehealth is effective in terms of: significant cost reductions for the patients and the health system, increased health service efficiency, increased technical quality and usability and increased user satisfaction. Numerous guidelines exist for supporting the user-interface designs of e-health systems for all the different types of users. However, relying solely on user interface design guidelines is not enough [3]. One of the possible ways to provide for good usability and acceptance of an e-learning system is to involve the target users of the e-learning services throughout the entire design and development processes [4]. The approach of design which actively involves users in the design and development process is known as a participatory or cooperative design [5]. Participatory design is more effective when users are continuously involved throughout the development process – from the conceptualization phases until the very end i.e. testing the new technology together with the users. However, this can be both time- and cost-consuming. In the situations where price and fast delivery are critical, researchers suggest using expert reviews [6] and [7]. Expert usability reviews are based solely on the usability expert’s extensive experience, mainly form usability testing. They are based on well-known and recognized usability guidelines and not on expert’s self-invented ones. Expert reviews do not involve end-users. In order to make experts think like end users, Molich suggests persona- and scenario-based expert reviews [8]. Persona- and scenario-based expert reviews help experts see the product or system from the perspective of the real users and the context of usage. Persona-based usability expert review takes into consideration the type of the end-user who is interacting with the system or the product. This type of usability expert reviews consider end-users familiarity of the terminology, information architecture, navigation system and the graphical user interface design of the system end-users interact with.