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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games

Date Submitted: May 28, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: May 28, 2020 - Jun 4, 2020
Date Accepted: Jul 26, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Exploring User Needs in the Development of a Virtual Reality–Based Advanced Life Support Training Platform: Exploratory Usability Study

Moore N, Yoo S, Poronnik P, Brown M, Ahmadpour N

Exploring User Needs in the Development of a Virtual Reality–Based Advanced Life Support Training Platform: Exploratory Usability Study

JMIR Serious Games 2020;8(3):e20797

DOI: 10.2196/20797

PMID: 32763877

PMCID: 7442950

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Exploring the user needs in the development of a virtual reality based Advanced Life Support training platform

  • Nathan Moore; 
  • Soojeong Yoo; 
  • Philip Poronnik; 
  • Martin Brown; 
  • Naseem Ahmadpour

ABSTRACT

Background:

Traditional methods of delivering Advanced Life Support (ALS) training and re-accreditation are resource intensive and costly. Serious games in Virtual Reality (VR) technology can complement traditional training processes as a cost-effective, engaging and flexible training tool.

Objective:

This study aimed to explore the specific user needs of clinicians engaging with a new interactive ALS-SimVR (Advanced Life Support Simulation in VR) application to inform the ongoing development of such training platforms.

Methods:

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced clinicians (n=10, age M=40.9 years old) following a single playthrough of the application. All clinicians were directly involved in the delivery of ALS in both the clinical and educational settings (M=12.4 years ALS experience; all with minimal or no VR experience). Interviews were supplemented with an assessment of usability (using heuristic evaluation) and presence.

Results:

The ALS-SimVR training app was well received. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed five main areas of user needs that can inform future design efforts for creating engaging training VR apps: affordances, agency, diverse input modalities, mental models and advanced roles.

Conclusions:

This study outlines important design considerations for creating a meaningful and engaging VR training app for ALS providers as well as a broad range of future training scenarios in healthcare. While aligning the training scenarios with accepted teaching algorithms is important, our findings reveal improving the user experience and engagement requires careful attention to technology specific issues such as input modalities.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Moore N, Yoo S, Poronnik P, Brown M, Ahmadpour N

Exploring User Needs in the Development of a Virtual Reality–Based Advanced Life Support Training Platform: Exploratory Usability Study

JMIR Serious Games 2020;8(3):e20797

DOI: 10.2196/20797

PMID: 32763877

PMCID: 7442950

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