Mapping HCI Principles to Design Quality of Mobile User Interfaces in Healthcare Applications

This paper reports on research carried out in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) on the interaction between a human and a mobile device, in the specific case where a healthcare professional uses the mobile device to access a medical application. The quality of mobile user interface is crucial in the healthcare domain, as the attention of healthcare professionals is usually on the patient and not on the system, and so low-quality UIs may lead to critical medical errors. In this research, the quality-in-use measurement model (QiU-4-MUI) is used to empirically investigate the impact of HCI principles on the quality of an MUI, in terms of five important characteristics, namely, effectiveness, productivity, efficiency, error safety, and cognitive load. The work investigates the applicability of these quality characteristics as indicators of the impact on user interface design of HCI principles, such as mental model, metaphor, feedback, affordance, and visibility. A controlled experiment was carried out among 23 doctors in a hospital environment to empirically investigate the impact of HCI principles on the quality in use of a mobile user interface, in terms of the QiU-4-MUI characteristics and in the healthcare context.