Iterative refinement of a tailored system for self-care management of depressive symptoms in people living with HIV/AIDS through heuristic evaluation and end user testing

BACKGROUND HIV TIDES - Tailored Interventions for self-care management of DEpressive Symptoms for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) - provides assessment of depression and tailored education on self-care strategies to decrease the risk of developing clinical depressive disorders. The iterative refinement of the prototype is an important process during system development to ensure that the design of the system is easy to use and useful. METHODS The heuristic evaluation and usability testing methodologies were used to guide the iteration of the HIV TIDES. RESULTS The system's compliance with the majority of usability concepts and current standards was confirmed by three experts on human-computer interaction in the heuristic evaluation. However, a number of usability problems were identified. Refinements were made based on experts' recommendations prior to the usability testing. The usability testing included six PLWHA with various levels of computer experience. Data from this iterative testing informed the refinement of key pages and the development of new features. CONCLUSIONS The final version of HIV TIDES consists of 73 messages. The average readability level of the messages is 6.0 based on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and the average word count is 103.