A comparison of usability aspects between an existing hospital website of Pakistan with a template based on usability standards

Abstract

More people search internet for medical and health information. Due to increase in demand for online health services, hospitals need to equip their websites with usability standards. Hospital websites should be user centered in order to increase the usability. In the instant research study, an existing public sector hospital website is compared with a designed template for healthcare website. Template was designed keeping in view the user demands for hospital websites. Usability evaluation of both websites has been performed. Twenty-one users were involved in the research study. Three representative tasks were performed by each user on each website and a questionnaire was presented afterwards to collect user opinion about the websites under evaluation. Average score was calculated against both websites for each usability component. 75% users responded positively to designed website template comparing with existing hospital website which got 33% positive responses only. Hence, it was evident that the designed template had better response for usability. The findings of this study justify the literature that user centered design can significantly improve usability of websites. This study is a step towards research which intends to understand usability problems and propose design rules for designing hospital websites of Pakistan in line with usability standards.