Rudi Villing and Paula Alexandra Silva, ALL Members have new article published in PLOS One

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - 12:30

Rudi Villing and Paula Alexandra Silva, ALL Members have new article published:

Garzo A, Silva PA, Garay-Vitoria N, Hernandez E, Cullen S, Cochen de Cock V, Ihalainen P, and Villing R (2018) "Design and development of a gait training system for Parkinson’s disease". PLOS ONE 13(11): e0207136. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207136
 
 Background
 
    Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) is an effective technique to
    improve gait and reduce freezing episodes for Persons with
    Parkinson’s Disease (PwPD). The BeatHealth system, which comprises a
    mobile application, gait sensors, and a website, exploits the
    potential of the RAS technique. This paper describes the tools used
    for co-designing and evaluating the system and discusses the results
    and conclusions.
 
 Methods
 
    Personas, interviews, use cases, and ethnographic observations were
    used to define the functional requirements of the system. Low
    fidelity prototypes were created for iterative and incremental
    evaluation with end-users. Field trials were also performed with the
    final system. The process followed a user centered design
    methodology defined for this project with the aim of building a
    useful, usable, and easy-to-use system.
 
 
Results
 
    Functional requirements of the system were produced as a result of
    the initial exploration phase. Building upon these, mock-ups for the
    BeatHealth system were created. The mobile application was iterated
    twice, with the second version of it achieving a rating of 75 when
    assessed by participants through the System Usability Scale (SUS).
    After another iteration field trials were performed and the mobile
    application was rated with an average 78.6 using SUS. Participants
    rated two website mock-ups, one for health professionals and another
    for end-users, as good except from minor issues related to visual
    design (e.g. font size), which were resolved in the final version.
 
 Conclusion
 
    The high ratings obtained in the evaluation of the BeatHealth system
    demonstrate the benefit of applying a user centered design
    methodology which involves stakeholders from the very beginning.
    Other important lessons were learned through the process of design
    and development of the system, such as the importance of
    motivational aspects, the techniques which work best, and the extra
    care that has to be taken when evaluating non-functional mock-ups
    with end users.