Usability Evaluations of a Newly Developed Wearable Inertial Sensing System for Assessing Elderly Fall Risk

Abstract

Falls are the leading cause of safety and health concern in older people. A wearable fall risk assessment system (FRAS) based on inertial sensing for proactive fall prevention is recently developed. The objective of this study is to do usability analysis of FRAS. The system usability scale (SUS), mobile application rating scale (MARS) questionnaires were used along with the open-ended questions. Total 20 young subjects participated in this study. The system usability score from SUS was 63.5 ± 18.1 (out of 100). This score lies in the good region, which is above ok. The average application quality rating from MARS was 3.5 ± 0.5 out of 5. The usability problems are categorized based on the design heuristics, among them flexibility and efficiency of system use were found to be frequently violated. The preliminary results from this study will be used for usability improvement and further tests on the elderly.