A Primer on Usability Assessment Approaches for Health-Related Applications of Virtual Reality

Abstract

Health-related virtual reality (VR) applications for patient treatment, rehabilitation, and medical professional training are on the rise. However, there is little guidance on how to select and perform usability evaluations for VR health interventions compared to the supports that exist for other digital health technologies. The purpose of this viewpoint paper is to present an introductory summary of various usability testing approaches or methods that can be used for VR applications. Along with an overview of each, a list of resources is provided for readers to obtain additionally relevant information. Six categories of VR usability evaluations are described using a previously developed classification taxonomy specific to VR environments: (1) cognitive or task walkthrough, (2) graphical evaluation, (3) post hoc questionnaires or interviews, (4) physical performance evaluation, (5) user interface evaluation, and (6) heuristic evaluation. Given the growth of VR in health care, rigorous evaluation and usability testing is crucial in the development and implementation of novel VR interventions. The approaches outlined in this paper provide a starting point for conducting usability assessments for health-related VR applications; however, there is a need to also move beyond these to adopt those from the gaming industry, where assessments for both usability and user experience are routinely conducted.

A Virtual Reality Resident Training Curriculum on Behavioral Health Anticipatory Guidance: Development and Usability Study

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Virtual Reality Human–Human Interface to Deliver Psychotherapy to People Experiencing Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: Development and Usability Study

“…The SUS was originally developed to evaluate the usability of products and services, including hardware, software, mobile devices, websites, and apps. Because the product was a combination of these elements and has previously been used to test medical devices and products [23][24][25], we selected the SUS to enable easy comparison with both similar and dissimilar products or devices [21]. The digital therapeutic system tested yielded a score ranging from good to excellent, depending on professional background [21,22].…”

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