Cognitive walkthrough - an element in system development and evaluation: experiences from the eWALL telehealth system

Epidemiological changes in the population lead to an increasing number of elderly people with a chronic disease. Telehealth is proposed as one of the solutions for the growing challenges of the health care system caused by these changes. The telehealth system eWALL seeks to promote the independent living of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mild cognitive impairment or age related impairments. The eWALL system is in a developmental stage in which partners from 14 different European countries are included. A three phase cognitive walkthrough-approach was performed on the eWALL system in order to evaluate the usability of the system. First the cognitive walkthrough performed by experts, second, rating of the identified usability problems identified by other medical partners, and third, discussion on a plenary telecommunication call among medical partners and technical partners. (n=119) usability problems were identified distributed among the 14 functionalities of the telehealth system. The majority of the usability problems were discovered in the functionalities: ‘TV’ (n=21), ‘Calendar’ (n=20), and ‘Environmental box’ (n=18). The least usability problems were identified in the functionalities: ‘My sleep’ (n=1), ‘Photo frame’ (n=2), and ‘My Everyday Life’ (n=3).The results of the cognitive walkthrough served as a concrete, structured and constructive collaborative tool between the medical partners and the technical partners involved in the eWALL project.