Usability Testing: A Case Study in Healthcare Software Development

This report investigates the role of usability testing in the context of software development, particularly within the healthcare sector. It highlights the importance of usability testing as a risk mitigation process, emphasizing the reduction of human errors in software applications. The report presents a case study on a patient monitoring system, outlining the methodology of the usability test, which involved four test users, and the key findings. The study identified several usability issues, including problems with the commenting and alarm functions, as well as other usability concerns. The report also references the importance of human factors in software design and development, especially in medical applications. This is a crucial step in the software development life cycle, which can help to prevent errors and improve the overall user experience.

Running head: RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE
Research Methods for Computer Science
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RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE
Usability testing is an effective risk mitigation process that can be employed for eliminating the
human errors in software application. Human beings tend to make errors that cannot be avoided
completely. Therefore, usability testing is considered as a major technique, by the developers in the
development process of any software application (Lindholm & Höst, 2013).
Medical devices play an important role in managing and monitoring the health of the people and
nowadays, major part of the medical devices is based on software. Different researches prove that almost
87% of all incidents in medical environments occur due to human factors. In order to lower the cases of
such errors, it is essential to incorporate human factors in the process of development of the medical
devices.
Therefore, the possibilities of utilizing usability testing as an effective risk management process
are widely considered in development of any software application. The user is considered as a key player
of the usability field, and the usability testing aims at investigating the type of problems and the
associated risks user may face while using a software application. Undergoing a usability testing is
therefore considered as the risk mitigation process for reducing the number of human errors.
An experimental case study was conducted for understanding the effectiveness of the usability
testing. It was carried out on a patient’s monitoring system for monitoring the critical health factors of the
patient. The usability test results unveiled the major two problems, which were commenting function and
alarm function. Apart from this, there are other 15 problems associated with the usability of the system
(Lindholm & Höst, 2013).
The usability test was carried on four test users, two of which were nurses and other two were
enrolled nurses of the hospital. The important selection criteria for determining the test users were that
they have not worked with the system before. Active intervention was used for performing the test and
the test person was encouraged to think out laud, while using the system (Lindholm & Höst, 2013). The
test facilitators further encouraged the test persons to express their thoughts.
Reference
Lindholm, C., & Höst, M. (2013, May). Introducing usability testing in the risk management process in
software development. In Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Software
Engineering in Health Care (pp. 5-11). IEEE Press.