Usability study for the design of a communicator for ICU patients with communication difficulties

Abstract

Most of the patients that reside in the intensive care unit experience fear, frustration and high levels of anxiety as they are not able to communicate properly. In this sense, the use of communication tools can be helpful to reduce the frustration levels and also, to improve the efficiency and the speed of the communication. The objective of this work, is to design a tool that allows solving the communication problems that patients suffer when they are admitted in the intensive care unit. In order to achieve the objective of this work, a qualitative study that involved interviews with former patients, hospital staff members and family relatives was performed. Afterwards, the design of a prototype was developed to later conduct and analyze usability evaluations with former patients, hospital staff members and patients relatives. The results expose that participants of the usability evaluations were able to perform most of the tasks effectively.