URL: https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Website Description: Becker\u2019s Hospital Review is one of the leading healthcare industry-specific news and information sources in North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Screenshot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tester: The tester is a mid-30\u2019s aged Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice. This individual has a high level of digital literacy as someone who is very comfortable using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, navigating government and payer websites, leverages an internet-based marketing strategy, and uses the internet to follow news and trends relating to their practice\/industry. This user is familiar with some other healthcare-related publications like Psychology Today<\/em> and ADDitude<\/em> but has not used Becker\u2019s Hospital Review<\/em> before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked the user the perform the following task: use the website to find and download the whitepaper on \u201cintegrated virtual care\u201d. The user immediately described being overwhelmed by the UI and the amount of options, text, and banners on the screen. The user hovered over the main Whitepaper directory option in the upper-center area of the landing page and selected \u201cCurrent Whitepapers\u201d. I have never selected that option in my years of using this website, nor do I believe I have ever noticed it. I expected the user to click the upper-right banner that displayed \u201cHealth IT Whitepapers \u2013 Download\u201d, use the search bar to enter a query, or to select directory option listed \u201cHealth IT Whitepapers\u201d under the \u201cFeatured Learning Opportunities\u201d list on the middle-right of the page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the following whitepapers page, the user quickly located the \u201cHealth IT\u201d category line item and hovered over its \u201cclick here\u201d option, hesitated, appeared confused, and decided not to use this option because it had text \u201cto download all\u201d after \u201cclick here\u201d. The user then typed \u201cintegrated virtual care\u201d into the search bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the following page with the search results listed, the user browsed the list of results by scrolling down, did not notice the \u201cFeatured Learning Opportunities\u201d menu with the direct link to \u201cHealth IT Whitepapers\u201d on the right side of the page, and instead selected a search result that had \u201cVirtual Care\u201d in its title. On the following page with the article content, the user selected the option to print to PDF the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I redirected the user back to the whitepapers page and asked the user to select the \u201cclick here\u201d option for \u201cHealth IT\u201d, despite their reluctance. On the following page (https:\/\/go.beckershospitalreview.com\/becker-s-healthcare-choose-your-hit-topics), the user scrolled through the check box list of Health IT whitepapers, checked the box for the \u201cintegrated virtual care\u201d item, and scrolled further down the page. The user unchecked the box for receiving the \u201cE-Weekly\u201d emails and selected \u201cDownload Now\u201d. The page displayed red text informing the user to enter the required fields for \u201cFirst Name\u201d, \u201cLast Name\u201d, \u201cEmail\u201d, \u201cJob Title\u201d, \u201cCompany\u201d, \u201cState\u201d, and \u201cWhat type of institution are you employed by?\u201d. The user exasperatedly entered placeholder text into these fields and again selected \u201cDownload Now\u201d. Red text displayed again, asking the user to complete the required fields, which after some scanning of the options turned out to be the acknowledgement checkbox for the site\u2019s privacy policy; the user checked this box and selected \u201cDownload Now\u201d to begin downloading the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Becker\u2019s Hospital Review website user interface has several issues that likely make it difficult to navigate and use by those unfamiliar with it. The first issue is that the site has some scaling problems on desktop; depending on how much the screen is being used by the browser (i.e., half the screen versus full screen), the site prioritizes and displays its modules and menu options differently. This produces a user experience that is highly dependent on how many windows are open and sharing the device screen simultaneously. Additionally, the test user and I found that the default 100% zoom of the page in the browser to be sub-optimal for navigation, with agreement that 25% zoom was far more usable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another issue that effected usability for the novice user was the formatting of information on the main page. The main page has three tiers of menu options, two are separated by an advertisement banner, and the second row of options present more option drop downs when hovered over that overlay the third row of options; the test user found this design choice to be confusing to navigate. Additionally, the main page has information organized into five different lists that feel cramped in their spacing and seems to reduce their intended accessibility by inundating the user with information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When selecting most of the content from these areas, the website requests registration information which, based on the test user feedback, comes off as pushy and makes the user question the legitimacy of the site or how the information would be used. The webpage would benefit novice users by reducing the amount of information presented on the screen, applying a more consolidated menu organization, and presenting less required registration information fields when accessing content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most impactful usability issue from the user test was the design choice of displaying the following text to navigate to the Health IT Whitepapers page: \u201cHealth IT – click here to download all\u201d (https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/whitepapers\/current-whitepapers.html<\/a> ). The inclusion of the text \u201cto download all\u201d pushed the user to seek another method of reaching the page (despite their not being another method), as they were concerned that the selection of that \u201cclick here\u201d would instantly begin downloading an unknown quantity of documents in an unknown format. Feedback from testing suggests that the navigational design of this list of whitepaper categories would be greatly improved by simply eliminating the text \u201cto download all\u201d as the following page allows the user to select which documents they actually want to download.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Usability Analysis by Matthew Post Target Website: URL: https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/ Website Description: Becker\u2019s Hospital Review is one of the leading healthcare industry-specific news and information sources in North America. Screenshot: Tester: The tester is a mid-30\u2019s aged Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice. This individual has a high level of digital literacy as someone … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/torch.cci.fsu.edu\/~pmarty\/5275\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/BeckersHospitalReviewMainPage25percent-4.png\")
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