Usability Heuristics for the Design of Interactive Attention Assessment and Rehabilitation Technologies

Emerging technologies are beginning to find their way in different health care centers and clinics worldwide for the purpose of assessment and rehabilitation for people with attention deficit disorders. And due to the variation in the practitioners and patients' requirements and preferences for using these technologies, understanding the usability issues has become essential for further development in this domain. In particular, addressing issues of selecting usability evaluation methods and their effectiveness in identifying usability problems. A bespoke heuristic set for the context of intervention programs for developing sustained attention is proposed and tested. In this study, we conducted usability heuristic evaluations on three sustained attention assessment and rehabilitation programs that involve emerging technologies; which are Neurofeedback and eye tracking. The heuristic evaluation was conducted by five evaluators, and the results showed that the proposed heuristic inspection evaluation method was effective in finding major usability problems in programs designed for sustained attention assessment and rehabilitation. Moreover, recommendations were presented regarding the evaluators' experience with the evaluated interactive programs, the contexts of usage, target user communities, and the technical background knowledge of the interaction modalities.