Design Guidelines for Effective Occupation-Based Personal Health Records

Personal Health Record (PHR) systems in occupational health are an emerging technology for employee health and well-being promotions in organizations. Since PHRs increasingly experience low rates of adoption, practitioners and developers are searching for effective design guidelines to match current occupational health and well-being trends and user needs. We examined existing literature and conducted focus group discussions with a group of employees (n=26) to identify typically expected PHR features. We evaluated those PHR features through a questionnaire survey with employees (n=360) to identify features that make PHRs more user-friendly and motivate their use in an occupational environment. We found that the ability of easy data entry to PHR systems is the most important feature to motivate the use of PHRs in a work environment. Additionally, clear guidance to overcome health risks, displaying the current status of overall health and well-being information, and displaying the most current information in the main interface were identified as relatively important features to make PHRs more usable in occupational environments. Based on those features prioritization, we designed and implemented an occupation-based PHR prototype. Finally the PHR prototype was evaluated for usability through practical trials with real-world employees (n=42) to identify design guidelines for occupation-based PHRs in the light of standard heuristics. As findings, we discovered that designers of occupation-based PHRs should pay more attention to pleasurable and respectful interaction between users and the system, enhancing user skills and knowledge, user control and freedom, visibility of system status, and privacy.