2019 Health Care Symposium of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Chicago, IL (March 2019)

Summary:
This poster will present an overview of the design process used to generate a positive user experience and intuitive workflow for a smartphone application designed to diagnose mTBI at or near the point of injury. This application first is used by a qualified expert (e.g., an EMT, Nurse, physical therapist) to configure the application for screening, which required the design of an intuitive smartphone workflow that can support users with different levels of technical and/or medical expertise. The application then transitions to use by the patient, who is guided through the execution of a set of assessment tasks, some of which take place within a virtual reality headset, that leverages the smartphone as its primary display. Following assessment, the smartphone is then transitioned back to a qualified user (which may or may not be the original person that setup the assessment) to interpret results and make an informed diagnosis.

While we followed a traditional user-centered and iterative design process, this work was unique given the mixed-user workflow, the transition between application viewing mediums (i.e., moving from smartphone display, to virtual reality, and back to the smartphone), and the uncontrolled environments where it may be used (e.g., emergency department, athletics field sideline, roadside).

This application is currently undergoing informal usability evaluations through live demonstration events with representative endusers, and in representative end-use-case environments. The results of these evaluations, along with the resultant designs from the adopted design methods will be presented in this poster presentation, along with demonstrations of the application to symposium attendees during the poster session.

Attendees can expect to learn about the challenges of designing workflows for mixed user-groups and that involve multimodal content presentation.

Learning Objectives/Knowledge Advancement:
Learning objectives of this poster are to present individuals with strategies to foster design for medical solutions intended to transition between care givers and patients, and that need to merge multiple HCI modalities.

Value:
The poster will provide value to symposium attendees by providing strategies for UX design on novel platforms (smartphones and virtual reality devices) as well as how to design mixed caregiver and patient workflow solutions. While we do not anticipate our findings will disrupt current thinking of UX design, lessons learned will help to foster better application of current methods within contexts similar to those described in this use case.