Designed Interactive Learning Programs for Touchscreen Kiosks

• Project Challenges

Urban, underserved, low-literate, cancer and diabetes patients need to learn health education topics to better cope with their disease. Despite being non-computer literate and non-readers, a program needed to be designed to help these patients learn more about their chronic illness.

There has been much discussion about the “digital divide” and how underserved populations are being left behind, especially when it comes to people learning about and managing their health care. This software program’s design challenge was to address this need. In addition, the program design needed to be culturally sensitive in Spanish and English and support the cultural differences of the mostly Hispanic/Latino and African American users who were being treated at the target hospitals.

Collaborated with Internal and External Team Members

• Project Solutions Provided

Collaborating with the project team, I designed the software programs to be touchscreen compatible and include spoken audio in Spanish and English. The user interface needed to be intuitively simple and easy-to-use so that patients without computer skill or literacy could use them to learn. The programs included user-friendly instruction screens, also with spoken audio, on how to navigate the program using colorful icons. To further support user needs, my program design included images which were culturally sensitive to the target users who were of African American and Hispanic/Latino backgrounds.

Designed Kiosk Specifically to Support Patients’ Learning Sessions

• Project Outcomes

My design for both the software and hardware for this research program was very successful. Many patients added official comments in their evaluation that both the program and the desk kiosk helped them learn. Other patients said they were surprised to be able to learn and they felt the program was easy-to-use and supportive of them. Doctors and nurses at the target hospitals were also very appreciative of the program. They acknowledged the successful delivery of the culturally sensitive learning program including navigation, content screens and kiosk signage.