Phd in PLANNING, DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE TECHNOLOGY

Thesis title: The Potential Usability Module: A Pre-Prototype Usability Evaluation Method for Smart Home-Use Medical Devices.

This thesis is the result of an industrial NRRP doctoral program. It introduces a usability assessment method designed to be integrated into the research and development of Smart Home-Use Medical Devices (Smart HUMDs). The purpose of this module, called the Potential Usability Module (PUM) is to evaluate the potential usability of such devices at a pre-prototype stage, in order to determine whether further usability optimizations are necessary before investing resources in the development of testable prototypes. This assessment would enable research and development teams to enhance the usability tests their concepts undergo at later stages of the process, reducing the risk of identifying critical issues that could have been revealed in earlier stages. This function is particularly relevant for companies with limited resources, as prototyping and usability testing can be particularly costly activities, not least because they may reveal critical issues that require the reiteration of the design phases. To define this module, research was conducted on the context of use of Home Care and on the specific research and development methodologies for the production of Smart HUMDs. The effectiveness and suitability of the module for its intended application were subsequently evaluated through expert reviews and a formative usability test. In addition to the development of the tool itself, this research produced as results also two user-centered descriptive models: one for the context of use of Home Care and another for the technical composition of Smart HUMDs. The research was conducted using a Human-Centered Design approach and was contextualized within the European regulatory and market scenario. This defined the fundamental requirements that led to the achievement of the specific research objectives.