Participatory Design and Scenario-based Usability Evaluation of a Clinical System for the Care of People with Mood Disorders, Cordoba - Colombia (Preprint)

Abstract

Due to the high prevalence of mental health illnesses and mood disorders, strategies involving the use of technology have been proposed to facilitate the detection and follow-up of patients.

This article describes the usability evaluation of a system designed for treating mood disorders in the population of the Department of Cordoba, Colombia.

A scenario-based methodology was implemented, which represented the main functionalities of the software for telehealth care. Three test cycles were conducted with the involvement of 30 users representing different roles (patients, patient' relatives, mental health clinical care personnel, and program logistics personnel). The NASA-TLX (1) and PSSUQ (2) scales were used to measure the workload and the level of effort to complete the different tasks of the system.

The usability evaluation results over the two test cycles were encouraging and showed PSSUQ scores of 2.2 and 2.3, respectively.

The workload showed improvements between both test cycles, prioritizing patient-type user-oriented interfaces.