An Agile Approach to Improve the Usability of a Physical Telerehabilitation Platform

The goal of a telerehabilitation platform is to safely and securely facilitate the rehabilitation of patients through the use of telecommunication technologies complemented with the use of biomedical smart sensors. The purpose of this study was to perform a usability evaluation of a telerehabilitati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied sciences 2019, Vol.9 (3), p.480
Main Authors: Pilco, Hennry, Sanchez-Gordon, Sandra, Calle-Jimenez, Tania, Pérez-Medina, Jorge, Rybarczyk, Yves, Jadán-Guerrero, Janio, Maldonado, César, Nunes, Isabel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collaboration
Evaluation
exploratory prototyping
Fractures
Heuristic
heuristic evaluation
Informatics
Inspection
Interaction Lab (ILAB)
International conferences
Joint surgery
Methods
Patients
Rehabilitation
Sensors
Smart sensors
Software
Software development
software product quality
Studies
Surgery
Telemedicine
telerehabilitation
Usability
usability evaluation
user interface
Workload
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Summary:The goal of a telerehabilitation platform is to safely and securely facilitate the rehabilitation of patients through the use of telecommunication technologies complemented with the use of biomedical smart sensors. The purpose of this study was to perform a usability evaluation of a telerehabilitation platform. To improve the level of usability, the researchers developed and proposed an iterative process. The platform uses a digital representation of the patient which duplicates the therapeutic exercise being executed by the patient; this is detected by a Kinect camera and sensors in real time. This study used inspection methods to perform a usability evaluation of an exploratory prototype of a telerehabilitation platform. In addition, a cognitive workload assessment was performed to complement the usability evaluation. Users were involved through all the stages of the iterative refinement process. Usability issues were progressively reduced from the first iteration to the fourth iteration according to improvements which were developed and applied by the experts. Usability issues originally cataloged as catastrophic were reduced to zero, major usability problems were reduced to ten (2.75%) and minor usability problems were decreased to 141 (38.74%). This study also intends to serve as a guide to improve the usability of e-Health systems in alignment with the software development cycle.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app9030480