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Compliance of Blood Donation Apps with Mobile OS Usability Guidelines

  • Mobile Systems
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to employ the guidelines of Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone to analyze the usability compliance of free blood donation (BD) apps. An analysis process based on a systematic review protocol is used to select free BD apps. An assessment is conducted using a questionnaire composed of 13 questions concerning the compliance of free BD apps with Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Phone usability guidelines. A total of 133 free BD apps have been selected from the 188 BD apps identified. Around 63 % of the free BD apps selected have a good compliance with mobile OS usability recommendations. Around 72 % of Android, 57 % of Windows Phone, 33 % of iOS and 33 % of Blackberry BD apps have a high usability score. The aspect of BD app behavior should be improved along with some style components: the use of pictures to explain ideas and the adaptation of the app to both horizontal and vertical orientations. Structure patterns should also be used to improve the structure aspect of a BD app. Usability is a quality aspect that should be improved in current BD apps. Our study provides smartphone users with a list of usable free BD apps and BD app developers with recommendations.

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Acknowledgements

This research is part of the GEODAS- REQ project (TIN2012-37493-C03-02) financed by both the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and European FEDER funds. The mobility grant of Sofia Ouhbi is financed by the Mediterranean Office for Youth (MOY GRANT N 2010/045/01). The mobility grant of Manal El Bajta is financed by Erasmus Mundus Program (204195 EM-1-2011-1-ES-ERA MUNDUS-EMA21).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics and Systems, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Sofia Ouhbi, José Luis Fernández-Alemán & Ambrosio Toval

  2. Servicio de Hematología y Oncología Médica, Hospital Universitario Morales Meseguer, Centro Regional de Hemodonación, Universidad de Murcia, IMIB-Arrixaca, Murcia, Spain

    José Rivera Pozo

  3. Software Project Management research team, ENSIAS, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco

    Manal El Bajta & Ali Idri

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  1. Sofia Ouhbi
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Correspondence to Sofia Ouhbi.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile Systems

Appendices

Appendix A: Free BD apps

Tables 6, 7 and 8 present the final list of the free BD apps selected in this study.

Table 6 Free BD apps selected
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Table 7 Free BD apps selected
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Table 8 Free BD apps selected. Part 3
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Appendix B: Usability results

Tables 9, 10 and 11 provide the usability assessment results of the free BD apps selected.

Table 9 Usability result
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Table 10 Usability result
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Table 11 Usability result
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Ouhbi, S., Fernández-Alemán, J.L., Pozo, J.R. et al. Compliance of Blood Donation Apps with Mobile OS Usability Guidelines. J Med Syst 39, 63 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0243-1

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