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. 2020 Feb 3;20(1):19.
doi: 10.1186/s12911-020-1033-3.

Investigating usability of mobile health applications in Bangladesh

Muhammad Nazrul Islam  1 , Md Mahboob Karim  2 , Toki Tahmid Inan  2 , A K M Najmul Islam  3
Affiliations

Investigating usability of mobile health applications in Bangladesh

Muhammad Nazrul Islam et al. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. .

Abstract

Background: Lack of usability can be a major barrier for the rapid adoption of mobile services. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the usability of Mobile Health applications in Bangladesh.

Method: We followed a 3-stage approach in our research. First, we conducted a keyword-based application search in the popular app stores. We followed the affinity diagram approach and clustered the found applications into nine groups. Second, we randomly selected four apps from each group (36 apps in total) and conducted a heuristic evaluation. Finally, we selected the highest downloaded app from each group and conducted user studies with 30 participants.

Results: We found 61% usability problems are catastrophe or major in nature from heuristic inspection. The most (21%) violated heuristic is aesthetic and minimalist design. The user studies revealed low System Usability Scale (SUS) scores for those apps that had a high number of usability problems based on the heuristic evaluation. Thus, the results of heuristic evaluation and user studies complement each other.

Conclusion: Overall, the findings suggest that the usability of the mobile health apps in Bangladesh is not satisfactory in general and could be a potential barrier for wider adoption of mobile health services.

Keywords: Bangladesh; Health informatics; Human-computer interaction (HCI); Mobile health; System usability scale; Usability; Usability evaluation; mHealth applications.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
An overview of the research methodology
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Average SUS score vs the number of usability problems
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Average SUS vs Average Size
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
The screenshots of CareSatisfaction app
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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