%0 Journal Article %@ 1438-8871 %I Gunther Eysenbach %V 11 %N 4 %P e47 %T Usability of a Patient Education and Motivation Tool Using Heuristic Evaluation %A Joshi,Ashish %A Arora,Mohit %A Dai,Liwei %A Price,Kathleen %A Vizer,Lisa %A Sears,Andrew %+ Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, ITE 437, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA, +1 410 455 8837, asjoshi@umbc.edu %K Computers %K health %K education %K usability %K heuristic %D 2009 %7 6.11.2009 %9 Tutorial %J J Med Internet Res %G English %X Background: Computer-mediated educational applications can provide a self-paced, interactive environment to deliver educational content to individuals about their health condition. These programs have been used to deliver health-related information about a variety of topics, including breast cancer screening, asthma management, and injury prevention. We have designed the Patient Education and Motivation Tool (PEMT), an interactive computer-based educational program based on behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic learning theories. The tool is designed to educate users and has three key components: screening, learning, and evaluation. Objective: The objective of this tutorial is to illustrate a heuristic evaluation using a computer-based patient education program (PEMT) as a case study. The aims were to improve the usability of PEMT through heuristic evaluation of the interface; to report the results of these usability evaluations; to make changes based on the findings of the usability experts; and to describe the benefits and limitations of applying usability evaluations to PEMT. Methods: PEMT was evaluated by three usability experts using Nielsen’s usability heuristics while reviewing the interface to produce a list of heuristic violations with severity ratings. The violations were sorted by heuristic and ordered from most to least severe within each heuristic. Results: A total of 127 violations were identified with a median severity of 3 (range 0 to 4 with 0 = no problem to 4 = catastrophic problem). Results showed 13 violations for visibility (median severity = 2), 38 violations for match between system and real world (median severity = 2), 6 violations for user control and freedom (median severity = 3), 34 violations for consistency and standards (median severity = 2), 11 violations for error severity (median severity = 3), 1 violation for recognition and control (median severity = 3), 7 violations for flexibility and efficiency (median severity = 2), 9 violations for aesthetic and minimalist design (median severity = 2), 4 violations for help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors (median severity = 3), and 4 violations for help and documentation (median severity = 4). Conclusion: We describe the heuristic evaluation method employed to assess the usability of PEMT, a method which uncovers heuristic violations in the interface design in a quick and efficient manner. Bringing together usability experts and health professionals to evaluate a computer-mediated patient education program can help to identify problems in a timely manner. This makes this method particularly well suited to the iterative design process when developing other computer-mediated health education programs. Heuristic evaluations provided a means to assess the user interface of PEMT. %M 19897458 %R 10.2196/jmir.1244 %U http://www.jmir.org/2009/4/e47/ %U https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1244 %U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19897458