Development and usability of an app-based instrument of participation in children with disabilities

Abstract

Background

Picture My Participation (PmP) is a picture-supported child-report instrument of participation of children with disabilities.

Aims

This study described the development of a mobile application of the PmP Traditional Chinese version (PmP-C) and evaluated its usability.

Methods

The PmP-C App includes features that allow the input of a child’s demographics, identification of frequency and involvement of 22 culturally appropriate activities, selection of the three most important activities and the specification of the environmental facilitators and barriers. The usability test was conducted with 10 healthcare workers, who interviewed 10 children with disabilities aged 6–12 years. The healthcare workers completed a usability questionnaire and were asked to provide feedback on the ease of use, learning, satisfaction and perceived usefulness.

Results

The mean score for the usability questionnaire ranged from 2.7 to 4.6 out of 5.0. The feedback indicated that the interface was simple to operate by the healthcare workers and was attractive and motivating to children. Improvements of layout design, operation instructions and technical problems were recommended, which contributed to the app program optimization.

Conclusions

The PmP-C App provides a practical tool with initial support for usability to enable active engagement and communication of children with disabilities with healthcare providers.

Keywords:

• Children with disabilities
• design
• environment
• mobile application
• participation
• usability

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to have the active participation of children and healthcare workers in the study. We appreciate our esteemed colleague, Ai-Wen Hwang, for her great supports during the time of this study, and appreciate the authors of the PmP for their inputs in the process of cross-cultural adaptation and app development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Sciences and Technology, Taiwan under [Grants MOST 107-2314-B-182-048 and 108-2314-B-182 − 041 -MY2].