Systematic Usability Evaluation of Voice-Activated Health Management Apps for Older Adults. (Preprint)

Abstract

Intelligent Voice Assistant (IVA), including Amazon Echo, is one of the burgeoning technologies to support older adults' health management. A growing body of literature has reported disparities in access and use of IVAs among older adults. However, little is known about the usability of IVAs currently available in the market from the older adult user perspective.

Thus, this study aimed to describe the status quo of IVA's usability and potential barriers to adoption among older adults.

We conducted a systematic usability evaluation of three major voice applications, called 'skill,' for health management in Amazon Alexa App market (myNursebot, OneDrop, Nutritionix). Task completion and Voice Usability Interface (VUI) heuristic evaluations were assessed using personas and scenarios.

We 1) identified potential barriers to using IVAs, 2) better understand how different personas interact with IVAs differently, 3) found areas that need improvement in IVA utilization among older adults.

IVAs are promising tools to meet the older adults' home health management needs, including medication intake management, blood pressure/blood glucose level monitoring. The results of heuristic evaluations in task completion and VUI by personas and scenarios showed potential barriers to using IVAs for older adults' health management. This novel knowledge will provide useful insights into the future development and implementation of IVAs in older adults.

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