Have you tried our health app design and evaluation service?

Two of Coventry University’s applied research institutes have collaborated to provide an app design and evaluation offering for mobile phone and tablet devices.

The Health Design & Technology Institute (HDTI) and the Serious Games Institute (SGI) have bought together their respective expertise in community based healthcare and software development in the delivery of this service which adds a third consultancy stream to HDTI’s existing product design and usability testing services.

App design and build is to be delivered in collaboration with the University’s Serious Games Institute whose developers have specialist knowledge of this area and have already produced a number of apps in the health and social care sector. In this regard, HDTI is also able to draw on the significant community healthcare expertise that exists in the University’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences and within its highly respected applied research centres.

The app evaluation offering is an online service that provides user feedback quicker than a traditional usability study but retains the ethical framework, academic rigour, independence and expert end user involvement. Critically, the participants in the evaluations are potential users with health conditions and expert knowledge appropriate to the app. At the end of an evaluation, the client commissioning the study receives a star rating report on 20 separate usability criteria, together with comments from the participants.

In addition to this, clients who have used either the design and build or app evaluation services will be offered the opportunity to have their product featured on a new App Zone being developed for HDTI’s new website. This will include the evaluation report (if commissioned) and feature links to the App Store or Android market where the product may be purchased. With the number of apps being developed continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new product to be noticed.

Addressing this problem, the App Zone will be a library that features only health, wellbeing and social care apps.

Commenting on the new service, HDTI Commercial Development Director, Guy Smallman said: “We are extremely excited about this addition to our consultancy services. App design and evaluation fits in seamlessly with our existing product design and usability offerings and this is a natural extension to HDTI’s activity serving academic, professional and commercial clients. We also believe the HDTI online evaluation service is an excellent way of independently evaluating a new app using a representative and informed group of end users.”

To find out more email Guy Smallman guy.smallman@coventry.ac.uk

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