Abstract
Countries worldwide are experiencing shifts in their population structures. Aging has a significant impact on healthcare and elderly care provision. COVID-19 indirectly promoted the development of telemedicine and smart healthcare industries. Numerous intelligent software has been designed to enable elderly individuals to live independently. However, elderly individuals face physical challenges when using advanced technological products. Therefore, paying attention to their needs and user experiences during the design and development stages is essential. In this study, we designed and developed a game-based rehabilitation app (Formosa Explore). We integrated the concept of gamified rehabilitation into the lives of community-dwelling elderly individuals and conducted usability tests of the app's interface and workflow. Task activity heatmap analysis, System Usability Scale (SUS) testing, EQ-5D-5L, and EQ-VAS were employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the app intervention in the lives of elderly users. The experimental results showed that the app exhibited good usability in task tests, with an overall SUS score of 74.22. Moreover, after four weeks of rehabilitation training using the app, the participants' Quality of Life (QoL) improved by an average of 5.3%. All participants' post-test EQ-VAS scores (90.31) improved by 6.7% compared to the pre-test scores (84.69). This study demonstrates that remote rehabilitation digital apps can serve as effective and user-friendly tools to provide community or home-based rehabilitation for the elderly. Additionally, a product developed specifically for elderly users should possess good usability and improve their quality of life, which can be an essential indicator for evaluating usability.
Keywords
Rehabilitation App Design; Usability Testing; EQ-5D; Gamified Rehabilitation;
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.421
Citation
Liu, B., Lin, Y., Hsu, W., Cheng, C.,and Kuo, Y.(2023) Post-pandemic era: evaluation of Quality of Life and Usability Testing for elderly rehabilitation app design, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.421
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Post-pandemic era: evaluation of Quality of Life and Usability Testing for elderly rehabilitation app design
Countries worldwide are experiencing shifts in their population structures. Aging has a significant impact on healthcare and elderly care provision. COVID-19 indirectly promoted the development of telemedicine and smart healthcare industries. Numerous intelligent software has been designed to enable elderly individuals to live independently. However, elderly individuals face physical challenges when using advanced technological products. Therefore, paying attention to their needs and user experiences during the design and development stages is essential. In this study, we designed and developed a game-based rehabilitation app (Formosa Explore). We integrated the concept of gamified rehabilitation into the lives of community-dwelling elderly individuals and conducted usability tests of the app's interface and workflow. Task activity heatmap analysis, System Usability Scale (SUS) testing, EQ-5D-5L, and EQ-VAS were employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the app intervention in the lives of elderly users. The experimental results showed that the app exhibited good usability in task tests, with an overall SUS score of 74.22. Moreover, after four weeks of rehabilitation training using the app, the participants' Quality of Life (QoL) improved by an average of 5.3%. All participants' post-test EQ-VAS scores (90.31) improved by 6.7% compared to the pre-test scores (84.69). This study demonstrates that remote rehabilitation digital apps can serve as effective and user-friendly tools to provide community or home-based rehabilitation for the elderly. Additionally, a product developed specifically for elderly users should possess good usability and improve their quality of life, which can be an essential indicator for evaluating usability.