User-Centered Requirements Analysis and Design Solutions for Chronic Disease Self-management

An aging population and the attendant growth in the need to care for people with serious chronic illnesses has created a demand for online support systems that can assist older adults to self-manage their illnesses. This could play a role in relieving some of the load on the healthcare system. Determining user-centered requirements of older adults for such systems is different from usual requirements analysis because older adults have particular needs, depending upon their chronic illnesses, their ability to manage technology, their access to appropriate technologies, and their cognitive abilities. This paper discusses in detail the use of the persona-scenario approach to elicit these needs from outpatients, informal care givers, and physicians. It proposes several suitable interface designs, depending on outpatient ability to deal with the proposed systems.