Center for Policy Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA.
Center for Collaborative HIV Research in Practice and Policy, School of Public Health, University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2022 Oct 7;29(11):1847-1858. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocac140.
To develop a usability checklist for public health dashboards.
This study systematically evaluated all publicly available dashboards for sexually transmitted infections on state health department websites in the United States (N = 13). A set of 11 principles derived from the information visualization literature were used to identify usability problems that violate critical usability principles: spatial organization, information coding, consistency, removal of extraneous ink, recognition rather than recall, minimal action, dataset reduction, flexibility to user experience, understandability of contents, scientific integrity, and readability. Three user groups were considered for public health dashboards: public health practitioners, academic researchers, and the general public. Six reviewers with usability knowledge and diverse domain expertise examined the dashboards using a rubric based on the 11 principles. Data analysis included quantitative analysis of experts' usability scores and qualitative synthesis of their textual comments.
The dashboards had varying levels of complexity, and the usability scores were dependent on the dashboards' complexity. Overall, understandability of contents, flexibility, and scientific integrity were the areas with the most major usability problems. The usability problems informed a checklist to improve performance in the 11 areas.
The varying complexity of the dashboards suggests a diversity of target audiences. However, the identified usability problems suggest that dashboards' effectiveness for different groups of users was limited.
The usability of public health data dashboards can be improved to accommodate different user groups. This checklist can guide the development of future public health dashboards to engage diverse audiences.
为公共卫生仪表板制定可用性清单。
本研究系统评估了美国州卫生部门网站上所有公开的性传播感染仪表板（N=13）。使用一套源自信息可视化文献的 11 条原则来识别违反关键可用性原则的可用性问题：空间组织、信息编码、一致性、去除多余的墨迹、识别而非回忆、最小操作、数据集减少、用户体验的灵活性、内容的可理解性、科学完整性和可读性。公共卫生仪表板考虑了三个用户群体：公共卫生从业者、学术研究人员和公众。六名具有可用性知识和不同领域专业知识的评论员使用基于 11 条原则的评分表检查仪表板。数据分析包括专家可用性评分的定量分析和他们文本评论的定性综合。
仪表板的复杂程度不同，可用性评分取决于仪表板的复杂程度。总体而言，内容的可理解性、灵活性和科学完整性是最主要的可用性问题领域。这些可用性问题为改进 11 个领域的性能提供了一份清单。
仪表板的复杂程度不同，表明目标受众的多样性。然而，所确定的可用性问题表明，仪表板对不同用户群体的有效性有限。
公共卫生数据仪表板的可用性可以提高，以适应不同的用户群体。该清单可以指导未来公共卫生仪表板的开发，以吸引不同的受众。
