HEALTH APPS FOR DIABETES AND OTHER CHRONIC CONDITIONS: DEVELOPING INCLUSIVE USER EXPERIENCE (UX) CRITERIA
- Geronimo Jimenez, Singapore
- Geronimo Jimenez, Singapore
- Elaine Lum, Singapore
- Shweta Bajpai, Singapore
- Linh Thai, Singapore
- Zhilian Huang, Singapore
- Josip Car, Singapore
Abstract
Background and Aims
Smartphone health applications (apps) provide an opportunity to assist or support patients to better self-manage diabetes and other chronic conditions. A proportion of people may face difficulties when using these apps e.g. those with physical, cognitive, visual, motor challenges, etc. In order to remove such barriers, universal design principles and assistive features should be incorporated into app design. Currently, there are no widely accepted universal design principles for health apps. We developed assessment criteria to evaluate the inclusiveness of health app design.
Methods
Published and grey literature on (app) design for older users, best practice in universal design for websites, and assistive features for (health) technology were used to develop an assessment tool to evaluate the inclusiveness of app design. We focused on the aspects of user experience (UX) that would be important to evaluate from the perspective of older users of health apps.
Results
Possible barriers for health app use for older adults relate to impairments in vision, hearing, psychomotor skills (e.g. movement, hand-eye coordination), cognition (e.g. memory, attention), as well as motivation. As a result, the UX criteria are divided into 3 main sections: visual criteria, audio/sound criteria, and ease of use/navigation criteria (see Figure).
Conclusions
Every day, a larger proportion of older adults with diabetes and other chronic conditions are using health apps to manage their conditions. The Inclusive UX criteria presented here can guide app developers and healthcare providers to develop and recommend apps that would be suitable for this population’s use.