A Tablet-based App to Support Nursing Home Staff in Delivering an Individualized Cognitive and Physical Exercise Program for Individuals with Dementia (InCoPE-App): A Mixed-methods Usability Study.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Physical activity promotion in individuals with dementia living in nursing homes is crucial to preserve physical and cognitive functions and the associated quality of life. Nevertheless, the implementation of physical activity programs in this setting is challenging, as time and expertise of nursing home staff is limited. This situation was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandem-ic. Mobile health applications may be a sustainable approach to overcome these challenges in the long-term. Therefore, the InCoPE-App was developed to support nursing home staff in delivering and implementing an individual cognitive and physical exercise training for individuals with de-mentia.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to assess the usability of the InCoPE-App in terms of user-performance and user-perception in a lab setting using a mixed-methods approach.
Methods:
Nursing home staff was encouraged to carry out five basic tasks within the InCoPE-App. Their thoughts while using the app were captured by implementing a think aloud protocol. Afterwards, participants completed the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire. The think aloud tran-scripts were qualitatively evaluated in order to unveil usability issues. All identified issues were rated with regard to their necessity to be fixed. Task completion (i.e., success rate, time) as well as perceived usability were evaluated descriptively.
Results:
A total of 14 nursing home employees (mean age 53.7 years, 93% females) participated in the study. The perceived usability of the InCoPE-App as assessed by the SUS questionnaire can be rated as “good”. Main usability issues were unveiled in the areas of navigation logic and compre-hensibility of app content.
Conclusions:
The InCoPE-App is a user-friendly application that enables nursing home staff to deliver and im-plement cognitive and physical exercise training for individuals with dementia in nursing homes. The InCoPE-App can be used with little training, even in persons aged ≥ 50 years who may have low digital literacy. To achieve sustainable use and higher user satisfaction of the InCoPE-App in the long-term, it should be implemented and evaluated in a field study.
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