Evaluation for Prescription Pharmacy Protocol

List of Tasks to be completed by the user:

Logging into the application

The potential user was asked to login to the application using her UW id and password. Based on the Consistency and Standards principal, the user felt comfortable interacting with the login window due to the similarity to other input interfaces where the user needs to enter her user name and password.

Searching for a patient

After the user logged into the application, I asked her to search for a patient. Due to the Aesthetic and Minimalist Design of my interface, the physician did not hesitate when she looked for the search textbox located in the right corner of the window.

Also, my clients found the search feature very useful, where with just entering the first number of the patient, a list of patients starting with that number was displayed so it speeds up the process of entering and retrieving the patient information. As result, I am satisfying the Flexibility and Efficiency of Use concept from the Ten Usability Heuristics, where accelerator features may often speed up the interaction for the user.

Searching for a specific medication

Based on one of the prior concepts, Flexibility and Efficiency of Use, the search tool dedicated to the medications was very easy to operate for the user. My clients were very impressed with this search tool. Names of drugs sometimes are very complicated so the ability of the feature to auto complete the name of the medicine by just inserting the first letter of the medication was very useful for the two physicians. In addition, my clients agree with the capacity of inserting the name of the drug without the auto complete function.

Filling out the necessary information for the medication

I asked the users to fill out the fields that included dose, frequency, route and PRN. The feedback here was very positive, because one of the physicians suggested specifying the frequency. Now, the design just shows the field where the user inserts the frequency that the medicine needs to be provided, for example, hourly or daily.

Submit the form with wrong information

Based on the Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors heuristics, I decided to test how the user reacts when wrong information is entered on the application. The user was very satisfied when a non pop up alert message was used to display an incorrect action. Instead of a pop up alert, the application shows a red image next to the field where the error was executed. The only downside of this feature according to one of my clients consists of having to place the mouse over the image in order to see the error displayed. However, she preferred this method to that of the “annoying” pop up alert messages.

Exiting the application without submitting

In the next task, I asked my clients to try to exit the application in the middle of prescribing a drug. I looked to assure that User Control and Freedom concept was applied. According to this rule, the user would be able to leave the application without the necessity of finishing a task before exiting the program. The user agreed with this decision. They like the opportunity that the application serves for leaving in free will.

Submitting the form

The users did not have any problem submitting the form with the information. The submit button is visible and easy to indentify. Again, I put in practice the Recognition Rather than Recall rule from the Ten Usability Heuristics where Nielsen states that objects, actions, and options should be visible to the user.

Printing the confirmation page

The last task consisted of suggesting to the user to print the prescription confirmation page for a patient’s records. According to the users, all the information reflected on the confirmation page was “clear and easy to read”. Also, the “printer” icon was easy to identify for the users. However, as medical records are electronic, one user thought that this function of printing might not be necessary.

In conclusion, these “think aloud” sessions confirm my success on the design of the user interface and the functionality of the application. There is no doubt that following the Ten Usability Heuristics principals from Jacob Nielsen has contributed to this achievement.