mhealth usability strategies for users with limited literacy skills from healthfinder.gov

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!

Thank you! Mary Ann Pettimaryann@communicatehealth.com

communicatehealth.com