Another study concerns the proper use of indexes, pop-up menus, and overview windows in Web pages. The use of spoken language as an input modality can help overcome some limitations of pointer-based Web browsers and thus, improve user interfaces for browsing the Web. A speech-based Web browser was designed to study the usability of browsing using speech input. The main objectives of the tests conducted were to find if users can be effective using speech and to determine the users preferences between the speech and mouse modalities. The most important finding of the study was that the choice for an interaction modality is governed more by the usability attribute of user satisfaction than by the efficiency of use.
Most users prefer speech over mouse, even if they can be quicker with a mouse.
The documentation generated for patient care by nurses and physicians is almost always exorbitant. The time spent in this process subtracts from the time spent on direct patient care, thus lowering the quality of care as well as the efficiency at which this care is administered. Our research team is working together with local hospitals to develop user-centered interfaces to improve this process. Our first objective on this project will be to develop a user interface prototype to handle physicians orders and nursing documentation. Usability engineering will be used for performance evaluation of the prototype.