Mobile computer Web-application design in medicine: some research based guidelines

Abstract

Designing Web-applications is considerably different for mobile computers (handhelds, Personal Digital Assistants) than for desktop computers. The screen size and system resources are more limited and end-users interact differently. Consequently, detecting handheld-browsers on the server side and delivering pages optimized for a small client form factor is inevitable. The authors discuss their experiences during the design and development of an application for medical research, which was designed for both mobile and personal desktop computers. The investigations presented in this paper highlight some ways in which Web content can be adapted to make it more accessible to mobile computing users. As a result, the authors summarize their experiences in design guidelines and provide an overview of those factors which have to be taken into consideration when designing software for mobile computers. ''The old computing is about what computers can do, the new computing is about what people can do'' (Leonardo's laptop: human needs and the new computing technologies, MIT Press, 2002).

On Complexity Reduction of User Interfaces for Safety-Critical Systems

“…Heuristic evaluation was completed for both the old and the new GUIs, following some guidelines from the medical domain -which is a similar safety-critical application area [13], [14], [15], [16].…”

Mobile Computing is not Always Advantageous: Lessons Learned from a Real-World Case Study in a Hospital

“…The acceptance of mobile devices depends above all on their usefulness and their usability [14]. When using such devices it is quite apparent that the limited space on their screens involves significant challenges to the developers and usability engineers [15], [16], [17]. For example, one study demonstrated that a touch-based mobile device can be used successfully within the healthcare context only if it has an appropriate design [18].…”

On Using Entropy for Enhancing Handwriting Preprocessing

“…Consequently, the data acquisition should have as little disruptive effect on the workflow of the medical professionals as possible. In the past, solutions for data input on mobile applications have been tested in the field [7,15,17,[20][21][22][23].…”

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