User participation in requirements elicitation comparing focus group interviews and usability tests for eliciting usability requirements for medical equipment: a case study

摘要

If all medical equipment had been designed with good user interfaces, incidents and accidents could be reduced as could the time required to learn how to use the equipment. It is therefore important to find approaches that contribute to the development of improved user interfaces and that strengthen end-user participation in development work. This paper describes the experiences from a case study in which focus groups and usability tests were used as a basis for the specification of user requirements for new medical equipment. The experiences are that a combination of usability tests and focus groups is a feasible approach for identifying important usability aspects and for opening up end-user participation in technology procurement. Usability tests showed important in order to identify detailed requirements related to the user interface. The focus group interviews, on the other hand, were important in order to, e.g., incorporate contextual issues. In addition, the overall approach had a positive impact on the common awareness of user problems among the key actors in the project: the end-users and the medical engineer. By establishing face-to-face meetings between the end-users and the medical engineer and by giving the medical engineer an active role in carrying out the usability tests and the focus groups, pre-conditions for an improved dialogue between the key actors could be created.