Studying usability of public health surveillance maps through framework based heuristic evaluation

• Published in: Computer methods and programs in biomedicine update Vol. 5; p. 100143
• Main Authors: Shah, Hurmat Ali, Househ, Mowafa, Schneider, Jens, Al-Thani, Dena A., Agus, Marco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 2024; Elsevier
• Subjects: Heuristics; Infodimeology; Public health maps; Usability design; Visualization; Usability design; Visualization; Public health maps; Heuristics; Infodimeology
• ISSN: 2666-9900; 2666-9900
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpbup.2024.100143

•Studying usability design of web-based publicly available health maps.•Designing heuristics to evaluate usability of public health maps.•Using statistical analysis to find out cumulative score of the health maps.•Recommendations on the user-friendly design of health maps. Public health surveillance systems play a crucial role in detecting and responding to disease outbreaks. Visualizations of surveillance data are important for decision-making, but little attention has been paid to the usability and interaction of such systems. In this paper, we developed a set of 10 heuristics to assess the visualization and usability of public health surveillance systems. The heuristics cover aspects of perception, cognition, and interaction. The perception deals with how the system looks in the first glance and whether it has pleasant effect on the user or otherwise. Cognition deals with the question of whether enough information is provided to use the system, while usability and interaction deal with whether the system is user-friendly in terms of the tools provided for interaction and use. We recruited a panel of experts to evaluate a set of systems using our heuristics. Results showed that there was variation in the scores of the experts' assessments, indicating the importance of multiple expert evaluations. Our heuristics provide a practical and comprehensive tool for assessing the visualization and usability of public health surveillance systems, which can lead to improved decision-making and ultimately better public health outcomes. The results suggest that the heuristic based evaluation through a panel of experts can provide meaningful results and insights into the usability aspects of public health systems. The results suggest that for some systems there can be agreement in terms of evaluation while for some other systems the experts’ opinions can vary based on the weightage and importance each expert gives to a particular aspect.