JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patients with persistent physical symptoms (PPS) presenting in primary care are often affected by multiple symptoms and reduced functioning. The medical and societal costs of these patients are high and there is a need for new interventions tailored to both the patients and the health care system.

Objective:

To examine the usability of an unguided, self-help treatment programme, 'My Symptoms', developed to assist patients and general practitioners in symptom management.

Methods:

Eleven users (four patients with PPS and seven laypeople) participated in online thinking aloud-interviews involving performance of pre-defined tasks in the programme. Thematic analysis was used to categorize the severity of usability issues. General usability heuristics was cross-referenced with the usability issues.

Results:

The analysis identified important usability issues related to functionality, navigation, and content. The study shows how therapeutic knowledge in some cases was lost in the translation of face-to-face therapy when converted to a digital format. The user testing helped uncover how the functionality of the digital elements and the general navigation of the programme played a huge part in locating and accessing the needed treatment. Examples of re-design to mediate the therapeutic value in the digital format involving both healthcare professionals, web developers and users are provided. The study also highlights differences of involving patients and laypeople.

Conclusions:

Taking the experience of common symptoms as a point of departure, patients and laypeople contributed to finding usability issues on programme functionality, navigation and content to improve the programme and make the treatment more accessible to users.