An Antenatal Care Awareness Prototype Chatbot Application Using a User-Centric Design Approach

The frequency of occurrence of severe infectious diseases, such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, Ebola and COVID-19, has been increasing in recent years, thus putting pressure on the delivery of healthcare services Pregnant women are some of the most vulnerable patients, as they are more prone to infections and have limited mobility due to their health situation In addition, preventive measures, such as social distancing and lockdowns have affected their access to healthcare services Considering these issues, in this study, a prototype chatbot application that can provide antenatal care and support for pregnant women from the comfort of their home is proposed A user-centric design methodology was adopted, where two midwives, one obstetrician and eleven pregnant women participated in the design and development process by providing regular reviews at various stages of the process In addition, an online User Experience Questionnaire was employed for collecting the users’ experiences after engaging with the protype application for two weeks The findings reveal that the proposed chatbot application (Alia) is effective in terms of attractiveness, perspicuity, efficiency, stimulation, and novelty In addition, concerns related to dependability (privacy and security) and supportability were identified Finally, UEQ scales of pragmatic quality (1 12) and hedonic quality (1 11) related to the chatbot application Alia, reflected good usability, reliability and quality aspects © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG