Designing an Educational Website to Improve Quality of Supportive Oncology Care for Women with Ovarian Cancer: An Expert Usability Review and Analysis

Abstract

A broad-based research team developed a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant educational website for women with ovarian cancer to improve the quality of supportive oncology care. Prior to a randomized clinical trial of the website, initial usability testing was implemented to evaluate the website. The initial review found that 165/247 checklist items had sufficient information to allow for evaluation with the website achieving an overall score of 63%. By category, the lowest scores were for the Home Page, Task Orientation, Page Layout & Visual Design, and Help, Feedback & Error Tolerance. Major issues thought to potentially impede actual usage were prioritized in redevelopment and the second usability review, conducted by the same expert, saw an improvement in scores. Incorporating usability concepts from the start of development, fulfilling the positive expectations of end-users, and identifying the technical and personal factors that optimize use may greatly enhance the usage of health websites.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Faculty Research Development Program of the Academic Health Center, University of Minnesota, NIH P30 CA77598, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health Award Number UL1TR000114.

Notes on contributors

Molly A. McClellan

Molly A. McClellan, PhD, is a co-owner and consultant with 2MD, a software design and consulting company comprising global experts in Human Factors and human–computer interaction. She is currently working as a Human Factors Engineer at Medtronic, Inc. Her research interests include usability in software development and human performance in medicine.

Raghav Pavan Karumur

Raghav Pavan Karumur, MS, is currently a doctoral student in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He received his MS in Computer Science from University of Minnesota in 2012. His research focuses on user experience and usability, understanding crowd behaviors in online communities, design, data mining, and information retrieval.

Rachel Isaksson Vogel

Rachel Isaksson Vogel, PhD, is a biostatistician with the Masonic Cancer Center of the University of Minnesota. She is primarily interested in research related to women’s cancer and collaborates with basic scientists and clinical doctors to design protocols, write research grants, conduct data analyses, and disseminate study results.

Sue V. Petzel

Sue V. Petzel, PhD, is a Health Psychologist in the Department of OB-GYN and Women’s Health, University of Minnesota. Psychological and social issues related to cancer represent the primary focus of her clinical and research interests. This includes adapting technology to optimize cancer education.

Julie Cragg

Julie Cragg holds a PhD in Health Informatics from the University of Minnesota. She has expertise in clinical informatics, patient–oncologist communication, and patient-centered care. Most recently, Julie has worked at Optum in Innovation, Research & Development, and at Medica in Health Management Analytics for improving outcomes.

Daniel Chan

Daniel Chan, PMP, with close to 25 years of IT experience, has led numerous projects utilizing technologies that support databases, client–server, eCommerce, CRM, and multisystems connectivity. He embraces the ethos of placing users at the center of systems design and development to drive success in user adoption and ongoing systems operations.

Julie A. Jacko

Julie A. Jacko, PhD, is a Senior Partner at BioMedical Metrics LLC and an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota. She is a world-renowned expert and scholar in human factors engineering, human–computer interaction, and health informatics.

François Sainfort

François Sainfort, PhD, is a Senior Partner at BioMedical Metrics LLC and an Adjunct Professor in Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota. His research expertise focuses on medical decision-making, decision support systems design and evaluation, health outcomes modeling and measurement, and health-related performance measurement and analysis.

Melissa A. Geller

Melissa A. Geller, MD, MS, maintains an active clinical practice as a Gynecologic Oncologist and has been awarded over one million dollars in research support including an NIH K12 award and an American Cancer Society Clinical Scholar Grant translating her basic science work with natural killer cells into a novel clinical trial.