Design of a usable game based, skill training application helping the screening personnel to refine measuring of the abdominal aortic diameter in ultrasound images

Abstract

Although the screening of abdominal aortic diameter helps to identify men with abdominal aortic aneurysm and saves lives, there is need to coordinate and synchronize screening personnel's way to work. The goal of this master's thesis is to design a game based skill training application that could give the screening personnel an additional opportunity to refine measuring of abdominal aortic diameter in ultrasound images. The design work follows the steps of the Goal Directed design process. Consequently, the design activities are divided into six phases: the Research, Modelling, Requirements Definition, Framework Definition, Refinement and Development support. The design process described in this master's thesis finishes with the usability testing of an interactive prototype. Evaluation of the design was conducted with end-users by studying their subjective ratings and performance on given tasks. The overall results of the usability testing show that the interactive prototype of the skill training application is not yet fully usable. Consequently, further improvement of the interface design is needed. The identified usability issues and rich qualitative and quantitative material about the interaction between test participants and the interface, collected during the usability testing, can guide the next design iteration and lead to more usable design.