Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Mar 2, 2025
Date Accepted: Dec 26, 2025
Expert Views on Criteria for Evaluation of Human Factors Methods: Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Human factors (HF) or ergonomics, which explores the interaction between humans and systems, has been used to support design in safety critical industries such as aviation, transportation, nuclear power and manufacturing. HF methods have the potential to support the safe design of health information technology (HIT) however the evaluation of HF methods to determine their effectiveness and feasibility in this context has been limited.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to identify criteria for evaluating HF methods when applied to real world projects and use these to propose a framework for method evaluation.
Methods:
HF practitioners were recruited via a purposive sampling method in conjunction with snowball sampling and invited to participate in a semi-structured interview to discuss HF methods and how they should be evaluated. Results were reviewed and thematically analysed.
Results:
A total of 21 participants took part, and interviews lasted on average 52 minutes (range 39 – 103 minutes). Participants explained that they did not routinely evaluate methods, however they outlined a range of criteria to support method evaluation. Overall, 5 criteria and 28 sub-criteria were identified. High level criteria included effectiveness, efficiency, ease of use and acceptability, and impact on the solution.
Conclusions:
Results from this study have been used to propose a framework for evaluating HF methods used in real world HIT projects. The framework could provide organisations with valuable information on how to optimise the application and outcomes of HF methods, and build HF capability within organisations particularly where this may be lacking. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.