mhealth usability strategies for users with limited literacy skills from healthfinder.gov
TRANSCRIPT
mHealth Usability Strategies for Users with Limited Literacy Skills from healthfinder.gov
Mary Ann Petti, MPH, CHES+ @MaryAnnPetti+ @CommunicateHlth
Acknowledgements Office of Disease Prevention and Health
Promotion, HHS‑ Ellen Langhans, MA‑ Linda Harris, PhD
The CommunicateHealth team
Presentation overview① Why care about literacy and health
literacy?② What we know about users with limited
literacy skills③ healthfinder.gov mobile usability testing④ Methods and results⑤ Implications of the work
Why care about literacy and health literacy?
LiteracyAn individual’s ability to read and write.
Health LiteracyAn individual’s ability to obtain, communicate, process, and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions.
Literacy vs. health literacy
What we know about users with limited literacy skills
Have trouble processing information on a screen• Prone to skip information
and focus on the center of the screen
• Tend to be easily overwhelmed and have limited short-term memory
• Usually navigate in a linear fashion and back-track frequently
Source: Colter, A and Summers, K (2014). Low Literacy Users. In Bergstrom & Schall (Eds.), Eye Tracking in User Experience Design (p. 339). Waltham, MA: Elesvier.
Likely to access web from a mobile device2 out of 3 adults in the U.S. own a smartphone.
1 in 5 adults in the U.S. rely on their phones for Internet access.
We all want to find health information whenever (and wherever) we need it most.
Designing for small screens is critical.
The healthfinder.gov team wanted to evaluate user experience on mobile
We reviewed literature.
Hypothesis = users with limited literacy skills will have more success using healthfinder on a mobile device
Our methods
We recruited 8 participants in Massachusetts
4 males4 females
5 Android users3 iPhone users
All participants had limited literacy skills.
Key findings
What was different on mobile?
More successful navigating through health topic categories on mobile.
Comfortable scrolling and tapping on their mobile devices.
• More difficulty finding the search feature and site navigation (menu).
• More difficulty navigating through health topic pagination.
Users had difficulty navigating through health topic pagination.
Health Benefits
Health Benefits
Recommendation: contextual buttons for each page
What’s next?
Updated guide coming
this fall to health.gov!
