A User-centered Design Process of an mHealth Application for Health Professionals: A Case Study (Preprint)
BACKGROUND User-centered design processes are less frequently employed and not fully explored for building mHealth applications that are particularly targeted to health professionals as end-users. Authors have used a user-centered design-based approach to build an mHealth application for health professionals, tasked to deliver medical laboratory related information on a daily basis. OBJECTIVE Our objective is to generate a simple and functional user-centered design process for mHealth applications for health professionals. This paper presents the key learnings from design activities. METHODS A stratified random sample of doctors and nurses was recruited for the study. The design activities were planned in the following sequence: focus group discussion for situation analysis and information architecture, design activity 1 for wireframe designing, design activity 2 for wireframe testing, and user testing sessions 1 and 2. RESULTS The final design and functions of the application, information architecture and interactive elements were largely influenced by the participatory design-based user-centered design activities. As a result of the design process we could identify the mental models of processing requests for information and personal preferences based on the experience. These findings were directly or indirectly incorporated into the application design. Furthermore, finding alternative ways of working within time constraints and cultural barriers, and the methods employed to manage the challenges of interdisciplinary discourse stood out amongst the lessons learnt. CONCLUSIONS We recommend a user-centered design process, based on a participatory design approach in mHealth application design, enriched with focus group discussions where possible. CLINICALTRIAL