The design process to healthcare applications: guidelines mapping to integrate user´s contexts and abilities

Abstract

In this paper we present a set of guidelines to support the designer’s activities during the development process of healthcare applications. The presented guidelines conduct the work of designers in the stages of collection and analysis of requirements and in the construction stage of the design process model, focused on the different contexts of users of these applications and their abilities. The design process is a multidisciplinary activity involving techniques and expertise in human factors, ergonomics, and the context of use. The consideration of these elements in the application design increases effectiveness and use efficiency, improves human labor conditions, and counteracts possible adverse effects of use by professionals in areas of healthcare, security, performance, among others. Adopting a design process model involves not only defining functional aspects and application features, but mainly being aware of the user’s needs, knowledge, and abilities, as well as his/her limitations and resources. The motivation for developing this project emerged from the difficulty of finding directions on how to conduct the design process of applications for healthcare professionals and meet the specific characteristics of such professionals, who are nomadic, have long working hours, and blend personal and social activities with professional ones. This mix of activities and contexts increases especially when it comes to healthcare professionals looking after patients who require continuous care, for these professionals, in addition to shared activities with their peers, still need to support daily activities of patients, both personal as therapeutic ones. This lack of guidance for designers, often caused by the characteristics of the healthcare professional’s activities, expands itself by the fact that designers are not ready to consider such peculiar characteristics of these users and they are not attentive to the mixing of contexts that happens naturally in their work. These facts make the design process of applications for healthcare professionals more complex and require a new perspective, wider than the one proposed by classical development process models. Thus, our proposal is the creation of guidelines to support the designer´s work in the application of a design process model that considers users’ contexts, their needs, and abilities, facilitating the adoption and allowing the appropriation of the developed design solutions. The guidelines that we present were mapped for a design process model of applications for healthcare professionals. Such model allows and encourages the integration of contexts and considers the healthcare professional’s abilities through the experience of use of technological resources and exchange of experiences among them, favoring the adoption and the appropriation, and providing the experience of new abilities for the healthcare professional. Following the tendencies of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Bring Your Own Application (BYOA), the presented guidelines conduct and stimulate the use of personal technological resources, like mobile devices, in the professional environment, allowing that the experience of use of such resources is utilized to promote personal, social, and professional integration in the workplace. The guidelines presented here consider the different contexts of healthcare professionals, integrating them in order to facilitate the management and execution of their professional, personal, and social activities and encouraging the use of technological resources to support this integration without harming the workflow of the professionals. Additionally, the guidelines consider the healthcare professional’s previous knowledge and abilities to facilitate the search for improvement and the support for the addition of new abilities for these professionals, stimulating the support for the communication and information practices and promoting the formalization and documentation of the practices in the work of the professionals. A case study was conducted to validate the guidelines and map them in the adopted design process model, with the participation of application designers and healthcare professionals in a partner hospital. The purpose of the study was to follow the activities of the stage of collection and analysis requirements and the construction stage of the adopted model, applying the guidelines to propose a design solution, the prototype of an application that meets the wishes and needs of a group of healthcare professionals, so that the solution can be naturally adopted, according to users’ knowledge and workflow and not only considering the best practical use of the technological resources. After the validation and analysis of the results obtained in the case study, the guidelines were mapped for the adopted model, conducting the employment of the guidelines in every stage and activity of the model. As a result, we present (1) the conducted case study and the final prototype developed during this study, (2) the healthcare professionals’ impressions on the design process, (3) the considerations, obtained through interviews, of designers who participated in this study, related to the use of the guidelines during the development of the design solution, highlighting the positives points perceived by the designers and found problems, and (4) the mapping of guidelines for the steps and activities of the adopted model.