If you build it, will they come?

By Barbara L. Massoudi, RTI International, BreathEasy Principal Investigator.

Why software projects often fail
You have probably heard that software development is risky business, with some 70% of projects failing in one way or another, but did you every wonder why? It turns out it’s not because the technology is super complicated or that some fancy algorithm isn’t working correctly. It’s simply that most software requirements are not well developed and captured, and often when they are, they’re based on a vision of the application that comes from the mind of the developers, not the users. So, lots of time, money, and hard work get wasted on systems that ultimately get rejected by the users.

Engaging users to develop the BreathEasy system
User-centered design is a software development philosophy and approach that puts users, rather than developers at the center of the planning, design, and testing of the application. BreathEasy researchers will work directly with our intended users – people with asthma and depression or anxiety and their clinicians to initially learn what they want from the PHR application.

• What kinds of ODLs do they feel would be most important to capture, and how could those ODLs be best captured?
• What types of challenges do the users see in interacting with the PHR on a daily basis and how can those be overcome?
• What types of feedback would they be comfortable with, or more importantly, not comfortable with receiving from the PHR?

These are just some of the topics that researchers will discuss with focus groups of 10 patients and 4-6 clinicians from the two Virginia Commonwealth University family medicine clinics in Richmond. Once this information has been gathered, the team will develop mock-ups of the application, show them to users and get their feedback. This will be the start of an iterative design and development cycle that we believe will ultimately lead to a finished application that is widely accepted by users and meets their needs.