School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, United States.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2024 Jun 5;11:e51666. doi: 10.2196/51666.
Given the dearth of resources to support rural public health practice, the solutions in health analytics for rural equity across the northwest dashboard (SHAREdash) was created to support rural county public health departments in northwestern United States with accessible and relevant data to identify and address health disparities in their jurisdictions. To ensure the development of useful dashboards, assessment of usability should occur at multiple stages throughout the system development life cycle. SHAREdash was refined via user-centered design methods, and upon completion, it is critical to evaluate the usability of SHAREdash.
This study aims to evaluate the usability of SHAREdash based on the system development lifecycle stage 3 evaluation goals of efficiency, satisfaction, and validity.
Public health professionals from rural health departments from Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska were enrolled in the usability study from January to April 2022. The web-based evaluation consisted of 2 think-aloud tasks and a semistructured qualitative interview. Think-aloud tasks assessed efficiency and effectiveness, and the interview investigated satisfaction and overall usability. Verbatim transcripts from the tasks and interviews were analyzed using directed content analysis.
Of the 9 participants, all were female and most worked at a local health department (7/9, 78%). A mean of 10.1 (SD 1.4) clicks for task 1 (could be completed in 7 clicks) and 11.4 (SD 2.0) clicks for task 2 (could be completed in 9 clicks) were recorded. For both tasks, most participants required no prompting-89% (n=8) participants for task 1 and 67% (n=6) participants for task 2, respectively. For effectiveness, all participants were able to complete each task accurately and comprehensively. Overall, the participants were highly satisfied with the dashboard with everyone remarking on the utility of using it to support their work, particularly to compare their jurisdiction to others. Finally, half of the participants stated that the ability to share the graphs from the dashboard would be "extremely useful" for their work. The only aspect of the dashboard cited as problematic is the amount of missing data that was present, which was a constraint of the data available about rural jurisdictions.
Think-aloud tasks showed that the SHAREdash allows users to complete tasks efficiently. Overall, participants reported being very satisfied with the dashboard and provided multiple ways they planned to use it to support their work. The main usability issue identified was the lack of available data indicating the importance of addressing the ongoing issues of missing and fragmented public health data, particularly for rural communities.
鉴于农村公共卫生实践资源匮乏，西北仪表盘上的健康分析解决农村公平问题（SHAREdash）解决方案旨在为美国西北部农村县的公共卫生部门提供可访问和相关的数据，以识别和解决其管辖范围内的健康差距。为了确保开发有用的仪表盘，应在系统开发生命周期的多个阶段评估可用性。SHAREdash 通过以用户为中心的设计方法进行了改进，完成后，评估 SHAREdash 的可用性至关重要。
本研究旨在根据系统开发生命周期阶段 3 的效率、满意度和有效性评估目标评估 SHAREdash 的可用性。
2022 年 1 月至 4 月，华盛顿、爱达荷州、俄勒冈州和阿拉斯加农村卫生部门的公共卫生专业人员参加了这项可用性研究。基于网络的评估包括 2 个出声思维任务和一个半结构化定性访谈。出声思维任务评估了效率和有效性，而访谈则调查了满意度和整体可用性。使用定向内容分析对任务和访谈的逐字记录进行了分析。
在 9 名参与者中，所有人均为女性，其中 78%（7/9）在当地卫生部门工作。记录到任务 1（可在 7 次点击内完成）的平均点击次数为 10.1（SD 1.4），任务 2（可在 9 次点击内完成）的平均点击次数为 11.4（SD 2.0）。对于这两个任务，大多数参与者都不需要提示——任务 1 中有 89%（n=8）的参与者，任务 2 中有 67%（n=6）的参与者。在有效性方面，所有参与者都能够准确全面地完成每项任务。总的来说，参与者对仪表盘非常满意，每个人都称赞使用它来支持他们的工作，特别是将其辖区与其他辖区进行比较。最后，一半的参与者表示，从仪表盘共享图表的能力将对他们的工作“极其有用”。唯一被认为有问题的仪表盘方面是存在大量缺失数据，这是农村辖区有关公共卫生数据缺失和分散的可用数据的一个限制。
出声思维任务表明，SHAREdash 允许用户高效地完成任务。总的来说，参与者报告对仪表盘非常满意，并提供了多种计划用于支持其工作的方法。确定的主要可用性问题是可用数据不足，表明需要解决公共卫生数据缺失和分散的持续问题，特别是对农村社区而言。
