Background and Aim: Today, information dashboards are the main tools for understanding and extracting knowledge from large data sets and can be used in various forms by healthcare providers. At the same time as the COVID-19 epidemic, several information dashboards were designed and developed. Still, due to the speed of the spread of this virus, there was no opportunity to evaluate them. Therefore, this research was conducted to evaluate the usability of the Covid-19 management dashboard.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted on the management dashboard of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. The dashboard was evaluated using an exploratory evaluation method with the participation of three medical informatics experts. Each of the evaluators evaluated the system independently and identified its problems by using thirteen principle checklist. Then, with the presence of all evaluators, the list of identified problems was combined, repeated problems were removed from the list and a single list was prepared. In this joint meeting, any disagreements about the problems found by the evaluators were discussed and reached a common opinion. Finally, the evaluators determined and reported the severity of the problems.
Results: In this evaluation, a total of 79 usability problems were identified. The highest number of problems was related to the feature “Help and Documentation” (12 problems), and the lowest number of problems was related to the features “Aesthetic and Minimalist Design” (2 problems) and “Privacy” (1 problem). 45.58% of the identified problems were in the category of major problems. The average degree of severity of the problems was from 2.05 (minor problem) related to the feature of “Pleasurable and Respectful Interaction with the User” to 2.99 (major problem) related to the feature of “User Control and Freedom”. Also, the average severity of problems was calculated as 2.5, classified in the range of minor problems.
Conclusion: The heuristic evaluation method identifies user interface problems of information systems and dashboards using predetermined standards. If these problems are not resolved, they will cause users’ time wasted, errors to increase, information quality to decrease, and users’ dissatisfaction and confusion.
