Designing for user experience : analysing app store reviews for app feature identification

Abstract: South Africa's blood stock level is often categorised as alarmingly low, leaving blood donation organisations in constant need of voluntary, unpaid blood donations to ensure their ability to supply hospitals with safe blood. Globally, there are successful mobile blood donation apps facilitating blood donation by providing useful services to blood donors, however similar apps available in South Africa are new, and not popular when compared to global standards. An estimated 5.9 million South Africans download and use mobile applications (apps), and this paper explores the process and results from the first phase of a study, which employed a sequential mixed method research design, to identify userpreferred features for a mobile blood donation app. The findings of the study should serve as a roadmap to blood donation organisations in South Africa, regarding what users expect from a blood donation app, and which features may possibly stimulate a constant or increased frequency of blood donation instances. The two largest app stores, Google Play and Apple iOS, served as the sources of the eventual sample of blood donation apps, of which the user reviews were analysed. Commenting from a design science paradigm, this paper reports on the selection process that had been followed to sample the relevant apps, and further discusses the user insights gained from the analysis of these apps' reviews. The paper further reports on how the app review analysis findings informed the creation of an interview schedule, that was used to gain in-depth understanding of perceptions held by users of the blood donation apps, specifically regarding the users' preferred features in these types of apps

Analysis and Design of an Information System for Blood Component Donations

In the UK, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) administers the blood and transplantation service to National Health Service (NHS), overseeing blood collection in England and transplant facilities in the United Kingdom. This research focuses on improving blood component donations by using an information system. This paper presents system analysis and user interface design of an information system for blood component donations to improve the current process. The software system requirements were gathered via a focus group consisting of employees from a Blood Donation Centre in the UK. The problem space in the component donation process was analysed and human factors has been explored for potential users of the component donation information system. Both low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs have been designed where interactive user interfaces have been made on Adobe XD tool. Usability evaluation has been performed with potential users from the focus group using a cognitive walk through to examine usability concerns and user experience of the design prototype. Conclusions and future work have been presented for potential further research opportunities

Captação de doadores de sangue

O Brasil é referência de captação de sangue, mas apenas 1,9% da população é doadora de sangue, enquanto o recomendável é de 3 a 5%. O objetivo desta pesquisa bibliográfica foi sistematizar as informações referentes ao desenvolvimento da captação de doadores de sangue ao longo dos últimos anos da hemoterapia. A revisão bibliográfica foi obtida através do levantamento bibliográfico realizado pela busca de artigos em bases de dados contendo periódicos nacionais e internacionais. Assim como, foi realizada a pesquisa do tema em ferramentas de busca, banco de dados regulatórios sanitários e hemoterápicos brasileiros. A busca de aplicativos de celulares foi realizada a partir de sites nas plataformas Google Play® e AppStore®. Foi observado que, atualmente, cartas, rádio, telefone e televisão ainda são meios eficazes de captação de doadores de sangue. Os dados da literatura também evidenciaram o aumento da segurança para o doador e receptor de sangue devido às alterações nas legislações brasileiras relacionadas à hemoterapia. A evolução tecnológica possibilitou o desenvolvimento de novas ferramentas que atualmente são utilizadas na captação de doadores de sangue, por meio do uso de aplicativos para celulares. Foram identificados 27 aplicativos nacionais e gratuitos para celulares, utilizados para fornecer informações gerais sobre os critérios de aptidão para a doação de sangue e promover a manutenção do estoque de hemocomponentes nas instituições hemoterápicas. No entanto, o uso destes aplicativos ainda é restrito, sendo necessário tanto uma maior divulgação dos mesmos bem como a atualização dos softwares viando a melhor aplicabilidade no cotidiano dos doadores

Discourse, Materiality, and the Users of Mobile Health Technologies: A Nigerian Case Study

mHealth, which is the use of mobile phones and other handheld information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been increasingly advocated as the solution to the problems, primarily infrastructure and personnel, facing the healthcare sector of many low-to-lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). Following a series of United Nations Foundation research and advisory publications (in 2012, 2014 and 2016) arguing that mobile phones are approaching ubiquity in Nigeria and across the world, the UN strongly recommended that LMICs undertake mHealth initiatives. Subsequently, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) published a National Health ICT Strategic Framework (Strategic Framework), 2015-2020; the rallying call of this document is that “Health ICTs will deliver universal healthcare [in Nigeria] by 2020.” The document takes a techno-optimistic position that celebrates and advocates for the creation of mHealth technologies, yet it fails to acknowledge the dire lack of the basic, necessary infrastructures for such electronic health systems, particularly in rural areas, including a scarcity of reliable electrical systems or the trained personnel who would understand how to use such technologies. This creates and sustains a healthcare precarity for poor and rural Nigerians. The rhetoric of health and medicine has taken up precarity as a framework for understanding how modern discourses contribute to the material positioning of humans with respect to technological systems. Using material-discursive critique and precarity as analytical frameworks, I tie the history of western medicine in Nigeria to the prevailing top-down approach which created widespread healthcare deserts. Using Critical (Policy) Discourse Analysis, I also examine discursive positioning of agents, e.g., “stakeholders” in the Strategic Framework and “heroes” in an mHealth technology developed and advertised locally in Nigeria, to reveal how policy documents and popular advertisements around mHealth are manipulated to camouflage these healthcare deserts with techno-optimistic rhetoric. Only when we address both the actual material conditions and the rhetorical and linguistic silencing of the people in these rural or poor areas will we be able to approach the promised benefits of mHealth systems in universal healthcare

mHealth : An innovative approach in periconception care

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the benefits, barriers and effectiveness of the Smarter Pregnancy mHealth program regarding the adoption of healthy periconception nutrition and lifestyle and its impact on early reproductive and pregnancy outcome. The ultimate goal of this thesis is that the new knowledge as described will further substantiate the awareness of patients and health care professionals regarding the importance of healthy periconception nutrition and lifestyle. Moreover, the opportunities provided by evidence-based personalized mHealth programs to empower target groups will probably stimulate the accessibility and implementation of periconception care. Because periconception care is a form of preventive medicine in the earliest phase of life, it should be considered as the best investment in health of current and future generations

Human-powered smartphone assistance for blind people

Mobile devices are fundamental tools for inclusion and independence. Yet, there are still many open research issues in smartphone accessibility for blind people (Grussenmeyer and Folmer 2017). Currently, learning how to use a smartphone is non-trivial, especially when we consider that the need to learn new apps and accommodate to updates never ceases. When first transitioning from a basic feature-phone, people have to adapt to new paradigms of interaction. Where feature phones had a finite set of applications and functions, users can extend the possible functions and uses of a smartphone by installing new 3rd party applications. Moreover, the interconnectivity of these applications means that users can explore a seemingly endless set of workflows across applications. To that end, the fragmented nature of development on these devices results in users needing to create different mental models for each application. These characteristics make smartphone adoption a demanding task, as we found from our eight-week longitudinal study on smartphone adoption by blind people. We conducted multiple studies to characterize the smartphone challenges that blind people face, and found people often require synchronous, co-located assistance from family, peers, friends, and even strangers to overcome the different barriers they face. However, help is not always available, especially when we consider the disparity in each barrier, individual support network and current location. In this dissertation we investigated if and how in-context human-powered solutions can be leveraged to improve current smartphone accessibility and ease of use. Building on a comprehensive knowledge of the smartphone challenges faced and coping mechanisms employed by blind people, we explored how human-powered assistive technologies can facilitate use. The thesis of this dissertation is: Human-powered smartphone assistance by non-experts is effective and impacts perceptions of self-efficacy

Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe