Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Oct 24, 2022
Date Accepted: Feb 26, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Empowering researchers to query medical data and biospecimens by ensuring appropriate usability: Evaluation study of the ABIDE Feasibility Tool
ABSTRACT
Background:
The project “Aligning Biobanking and DIC Efficiently” (ABIDE_MI) aims to harmonize technologies and governance structures of German university hospitals and their biobanks to facilitate searching for patient data and/or biospecimens. The central element will be a Feasibility Tool for researchers to query the availability of samples and/or data to determine the feasibility of their study project.
Objective:
The objectives of the present work were, a) the quantitative evaluation of the overall usability of the user interface, b) the identification of critical usage situations from the user's point of view, c) the operability of the underlying ontology from the user's point of view, d) the collection of user feedback on further functionalities, and consequently e) the derivation of recommendations for an optimization of the quality of use, especially with regard to the satisfaction for a more "intuitive" usability.
Methods:
To achieve the study goal, an exploratory usability test consisting of two main parts was conducted. In the first part, the thinking aloud method (test persons express their thoughts aloud throughout the use of the tool) was applied using a deployable prototype followed by a quantitative questionnaire. In the second part, the interview method was combined with supplementary mock-ups to collect users' opinions on possible additional features.
Results:
The study cohort rated global usability based on the System Usability Scale with a good score of 81.25. The tasks assigned posed a certain challenge. No participant was able to solve all tasks correctly. A detailed analysis showed that this was mostly due to minor issues. This impression was confirmed by the recorded statements, describing the tool as intuitive and user-friendly. The feedback also provided useful insights as to which critical usage problems occur and need to be addressed promptly.
Conclusions:
The findings indicate that the prototype of the ABIDE Feasibility Tool is heading in a good direction. However, we see potential for optimization above all in the findability of the search functions, the unambiguous distinguishability of criteria, and visibility of their associated classification system. Overall, it can be stated that the combination of different tools used to evaluate the Feasibility Tool provides a comprehensive picture of its usability.
Citation
