pacis 2016: innovation in designing health information websites

Innovation in Designing Health Information Websites

Patrick Cheong-Iao Pang 1,3, Shanton Chang 1, Karin Verspoor 1,2, Jon Pearce 1

1. Department of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia2. Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre, The University of Melbourne, Australia3. NICTA Victoria Research Lab, Australia

Image courtesy of Flickr @foshydog | CC BY-NC-ND

Some Observations

Complicated; Not fully utilise the information in each

website. Could users have a different (better)

way to find information?

Patrick Cheong-Iao Pang, Shanton Chang, Jon Pearce and Karin Verspoor. (2014). Online health information seeking behaviour: Understanding different

search approaches. Proceedings of the 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014).

Different Search Approaches

Pang, Chang, Pearce and Verspoor. 2014. Online health information seeking behaviour: Understanding different search approaches. Proceedings of the 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014).

Our Solution

Better Health Explorer (BHX) Aims to provide a web-based

environment to explore health information

Demo

Goals

Evaluate how users respond in both focused and exploratory scenarios;

Summarise design strategies for building effective health websites.

Research Design

We tested with two websites:

Better Health Explorer (BHX) Better Health Channel (baseline)

Research Design

For each website, participants were required to evaluate in:

Focused search scenario; Exploratory search scenario.

Total 4 tasks for each participant.

Data Collection

5-point Likert Scale Survey Short Interview

Participants

31 participants Male: 15 Female: 16

Average age: 34 Range: 20 - 72

Occupations: Student: 19 Staff: 17 Others: 2

Results: Focused Search

Item Baseline Mean

BHX Mean

p-value

Effect Size

Presented Diverse Information 3.3 4.0 0.003 0.373Presented Serendipitous Topics 2.8 3.8 0.000 0.495Enjoyment 3.0 3.9 0.000 0.494Learnt New Knowledge 3.7 4.3 0.012 0.318Engagement 3.1 3.9 0.002 0.399Would Use Again 3.7 4.0 0.025 0.288All p<0.05

Results: Exploratory Search

Item Baseline Mean

BHX Mean

p-value

Effect Size

Presented Diverse Information 3.4 4.4 0.003 0.374Presented Serendipitous Topics 3.3 4.4 0.001 0.408Enjoyment 3.2 4.1 0.015 0.309Learnt New Knowledge 3.7 4.3 0.016 0.302Engagement 3.2 4.0 0.002 0.394Would Use Again 3.5 4.0 0.008 0.341All p<0.05

Correlations

Item 1 Item 2 Correlation value

p-value

Learnt New Knowledge

Presented Serendipitous Topics 0.725 0.000*

Task Success Easy to Tell the System What Is Needed

0.470 0.006*

Engagement Presented Diverse Information 0.074 0.097

Usefulness Presented Diverse Information 0.483 0.069

* p<0.05

Lessons Learnt

1. Improving the communication of health information needs;

2. More diverse information;3. Introducing serendipity.

Improving the Communication of Health Information Needs

Correlation:Learnt New Knowledge <> Easy to Tell the System What Is Needed

“In another one (baseline) I need to look for topics. This one (BHX) showed me topics. So it’s better.”

Improving the Communication of Health Information Needs

Keyword search is the most common way to input the health information needs;

Good for focused search, but NOT for exploratory search;

Need to have new methods for passing health information needs.

More Diverse Information

“By giving you choices rather than just coming up with the top things, I think it makes (the system) more interesting to use.”

Correlated with Engagement and Usefulness.

More Diverse Information

Introducing Serendipity

“Giving me different options that I did not consider.”

“I never thought about this and then (it showed up). Ah! This is good.”

Correlated with Learning New Knowledge.

Introducing Serendipity

Summary

Focused vs. Exploratory Search in health;

Better Health Explorer is seemed outstanding in supporting health information seeking;

Summary

3 design strategies for effective health websites:

1. Improving the communication of health information needs;

2. More diverse information;3. Introducing serendipity.

mail@patrickpang.net @pangpatrick

Acknowledgements: