Cláudia Mont’Alvão

Usability testing of mobile applications store: purchase, search and reviews

The objective of this research was to evaluate the process of purchase, search and evaluation of apps in the two main mobile stores available in Brazil, Google Play Store and iPhone App Store. It takes place in Brazil, from September to October of 2012. Sixteen users were selected based on a socio-demographic profile. The results helped to evaluate the overall opinion and attitude of the Brazilian users regarding each system. The debriefing confirmed issues in both stores, some similar between them but others quite particular. It also helped to indentify some minors preferences regarding each task in each store.

Usability Testing for e-health Application: A Case Study for Sana/Open MRS

This paper presents the conduction of a usability test with users of Sana/ Open MRS system. These users are Medicine students that performed four tasks, using distinct scenarios. As part of a bigger research, the objective of this procedure was evaluating user´s opinions and from these results, supports system developers in new interfaces.

Color and wayfinding a research in a hospital environment

This paper presents some results of a larger study – in human factors field - designed to follow-up the interrelationships between users and the hospital environment, regarding its spatial orientation. Among some tools that were used, here are presented the results of a questionnaire that contains several questions about user’s perception of hospital’s environment, perception of colors, comparing it colors to a color scale and also questions proposed by Lawton and Kallai’ Scale (2002)that compares wayfinding spatial strategies among gender.

Collaborative Design Methods and Macroergonomics as Organizational Tools for Distance Education’s Design Teams

This paper discusses the possibility of using collaborative methodologies of Design and Ergonomics, such as Participatory Design, Design Thinking, Management Design and Macroergonomics, among others, as tools for solving organizational challenges faced by multidisciplinary teams that produce educational material. Distance Education can present, due to its intrinsic characteristics and cultural issues, difficulties of adoption and implementation by students and professionals. On top of that, new technologies have changed social and educational paradigms, requiring the educational institutions to form multidisciplinary teams and to invest in equipment to keep up with the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Therefore, this paper contextualizes the process of educational content creation, based on current technological and pedagogical demands. It also points out the importance of choosing management options that help the multidisciplinary team to reach its full potential and produce high quality material. For that, this paper addresses Design and Ergonomics as collaborative tools to achieve the management guidelines required to improve the multidisciplinary processes. Finally, it proposes a case study to ascertain the applicability of the theoretical concepts raised.

An Analysis of Usability Issues on Fashion M-commerce Websites’ Product Page

Due to the increasing number of mobile phone users with access to the Internet over the last decade, it has become increasingly necessary to propose usability guidelines designed to be applied to projects made for mobile devices. In Brazil, m-commerce is becoming more and more popular and in the short-term it is likely to reach similar performance numbers as to the traditional ecommerce. However, there are still several websites that are not specifically designed for mobile devices and do not take into account their characteristics and singularities. A review of the existing literature on the subject was undertaken to elicit suggested guidelines for the development of digital interfaces. Based on these guidelines the websites of two retail companies were analyzed. The objective of the analysis was to assess what are the impacts on usability caused by uncritical adaptations of complete websites to mobile versions. This evaluation was done bearing in mind the categorization of usability principles developed by Brangier e Barcenilla (2003). Issues such as: confusing translations, lack of consistency, small touch targets, amongst others, were detected on the analyzed websites. This investigation showed it is possible to make small changes that would result in websites with improved usability.

Perspectives in Sustainable Interaction Design: A preliminary discussion involving human values and HCI

The growth of products and services consumption, including the technological ones, turns necessary to rethink our behavior in a way that it minimizes the impacts of consumption in our society, as well as on future generations and improves mental, physical and social well-being. Sustainable Interaction Design (SID), a field of study within HCI, argues that sustainability must be the primary focus of projects involving the use of technologies. analyzes and discusses SID’s applicability in the Interaction Design field and process through an integrative literature review of papers published between 2005 and 2015, books and documents that address this design-technology-sustainability relation. The idea isn’t discuss all questions that are raised on the literature, but share a collection of perspectives. As a conclusion, further discussion is needed involving how to approach the three pillars of sustainability in projects, how to incorporate SID concepts to Design Education, how to apply these concepts in a multidisciplinary team in the professional environment, and how HCI evaluation methods can be improved to consider sustainability issues.

MedData: A Mobile Application Designed for Medical Teams to Monitor Clinical Evolution of Inpatient in ICU Context

Intensive Care Units inside hospitals are usually managed by different teams of physicians. Each team is in charge of a specific number of patients and are composed by physicians that cover different specialties. The information gathered by the physicians regarding each patient is crucial to their treatment and is also very valuable for the rest of their team. In the reality of the majority of the Brazilian hospitals, this type of information is recorded in paper notes and later archived in hospital records. In order to share this information with the rest of the medical team, physicians nowadays regularly create their own digital files and saves them in cloud based servers such as Drop Box or Google drive in order to give access of the data with their peers. Aiming to solve this problem, research teams from PUC-Rio university developed a mobile application named MedData. This app is currently being developed and tested, as described in this paper.

ANALISE DE CARTILHAS EDUCATIVAS EM SAÚDE: UMA CONTRIBUIÇÃO DA ERGONOMIA INFORAMCIONAL

The following article analyzes graphic materials used as means of information in health care area. Its principal objective is to contribute to the suitability of these materials for diabetic patients. In the research process, 21 subjects of educational health care area were collected and analyzed syntactically and semantically.

Health Care Professionals vs Other Professionals: Do They Have Different Perceptions about Health Care Waste and Dangerous Products Pictograms? Some Findings Using a Digital Device in Field Survey

This paper presents a part of a wider research about GHS symbols comprehensibility. Here, a field survey was conducted using a digital device, instead of traditional platform – printed paper. Participants were health care professionals and other professionals and a comparison among the results about these groups is presented and discussed.

Aging and New Technologies: Challenges and Perspectives

This article discusses the results of an online questionnaire distributed to 393 participants residing in Brazil. The tool is an important part of the doctoral thesis of Design whose goal is to understand how older people socialize these days, when communication occurs much more virtually than in person. The world advocates that the elderly find it difficult to use technology and have little interest in using it. The relationship with technology can set about their inclusion or exclusion.