A User-based Heuristic Evaluation of an Intelligent Healthcare System Alice May-Kuen Wong Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Taoyuan, Taiwan walice@adm.cgmh.org.tw Hsien Jui Chang Department of Industrial Design, College of Management, Chang Gung University Taoyuan, Taiwan rayosmond2002@hotmail.com Tsai-Hsuan Tsai Department of Industrial Design, College of Management, Chang Gung University Taoyuan, Taiwan ttsai@mail.cgu.edu.tw Kevin C. Tseng*, Member, IEEE Department of Industrial Design, College of Management Chang Gung University Taoyuan, Taiwan ktseng@pddlab.org Abstract—The current study aimed to evaluate an intelligent health care and promotion system. The developed system, named as CareTogether Pro, was designed for elderly people who are at risk for or suffering from metabolic syndrome that would enable them to manage their health by themselves and improve their satisfaction towards distributed health care. In this study, a heuristic evaluation was employed to identify usability problems in the newly developed system among those users living in an elderly community. The results showed anticipation of both the value of the system as well as potential issues. Index Terms—Usability, healthcare system I. INTRODUCTION A. Health System With the rapid development of medical technology, most medical issues have changed from chronic disease and frailty to acute disease [1, 2] . 2008 statistics report on cause of death show that metabolic syndrome and its related diseases have become the main cause of death among adults over age 65 [3]. Therefore, not only has metabolic syndrome become one of the most important health issues in recent years, but its subsequent health monitoring products and systems are also receiving more and more attention. Such health systems are intended to promote the effective prevention of diseases associated with the elderly by providing medical care programs [4]. Youm et al. [5] integrated blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, body fat, and other physiological parameters of metabolic syndrome into a self-health system, which combines a lifestyle questionnaire and data analysis to make relevant suggestions and improve the provision of healthcare. Lo et al. [6] applied tiny sensors to measure users’ physiological data, including heart rate, heartbeat, blood glucose, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and etc. This information, combined with RFID technology, is entered into the ubiquitous context-aware healthcare service system (UCHS), which provides medical advice and assistance; the information is also used in an emergency urgent care system so that ambulances can quickly provide relief. In addition, Chen [7] has also embedded a pulse-monitoring system via a network interface to provide an immediate diagnosis of an elderly person’s health status; when there is an emergency situation, the system can notify emergency services. Also, in everyday use, it can assist an elderly person in self-health management in order to enhance his or her quality of life. In this study, we evaluate a health system, CareTogether Pro, to help users manage their blood pressure. B. Human Factor However, the human factor has not always been taken into account in the development of new technologies. Many health-measurement instruments and systems are not suitable for user-operation; in addition to their lack of a suitable user interface, their operation is too complicated for the average person, thus causing people to inadvertently ignore their own health [8, 9]. Inappropriate user interface design usually leads to usability problems. For instance, Oztekin et al. studied an e-learning system intended to assist students in a biology course. The system did not provide a warning message to advise users to save their files before they logged out. Therefore, users often accidently lost their files [10]. Saitwl et al. point out that a poorly-designed system interface will confuse users when they attempt to operate the system. The study showed that a health-record system with unclear information can not only lead users enter the wrong data in the system but can also will cost users more time in learning how to operate the system. *Kevin C. Tseng with the Department of Industrial Design, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan (e-mail: ktseng@pddlab.org). 978-1-4799-1412-8/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 2013 IEEE Third International Conference on Consumer Electronics - Berlin (ICCE-Berlin) 64