Applying Heuristic Evaluation on Medical Devices User Manuals

作者:Andrade F O*; Nascimento L N; Wood G A; Calil S J
来源:World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, 2015-06-07 to 2015-06-12.
DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-19387-8_368

摘要

Driven by the importance of user manuals as a complement to training courses on the operation of medical devices, the objective of this paper is to verify if the heuristic evaluation approach proposed by Zhang and co-authors is applicable to such manuals. After applying the method in the evaluation of a non-medical device user manual and finding some difficulties to interpret the original terms and definitions, we adapted some of the usability heuristics so they would be more directly related to manuals than to devices. The adapted heuristics were applied on the usability evaluation of a linear peristaltic infusion pump's user manual. Although no healthcare professionals were present in the evaluation team, heuristic violations associated to diverse usability heuristics were identified, including some classified as usability catastrophes (the ones which could lead to patient's harm). Even with adaptations, members of the team reported difficulties in focusing on the user manual when the current usability problems seemed to be on the medical device itself. Despite the difficulties, the evaluation provided enough data on the user manual problems to formulate some corrective recommendations for the device manufacturer. Additional studies are required to confirm if modifications to some of the original fourteen usability heuristics are really necessary and, if so, what adaptations would be most adequate.

  • 出版日期2015

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