User interface design guidelines for smartphone applications for people with Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is often responsible for difficulties in interacting with smartphones; however, research has not yet addressed these issues and how these challenge people with Parkinson's (PwP). This paper specifically investigates the symptoms and characteristics of PD that may influence the interaction with smartphones to then contribute in this direction. The research was based on a literature review of PD symptoms, eight semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals and observations of PwP, and usability experiments with 39 PwP. Contributions include a list of PD symptoms that may influence the interaction with smartphones, a set of experimental results that evaluated the performance of four gestures tap, swipe, multiple-tap, and drag and 12 user interface design guidelines for creating smartphone user interfaces for PwP. Findings contribute to the work of re-

Patient Perspectives on Self-Management Technologies for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

“…This work contributes a deeper understanding of ME/CFS patients' needs for self-management technologies. The studies also affirm the results of prior work [11,56], which has highlighted that people with chronic conditions encounter significant challenges when self-management tools are not tailored to the specifics of their condition. Our studies have revealed a set of particular concerns that are relevant to the self-management of ME/CFS, from which we propose five high-level design recommendations.…”

“…Likewise, it is also important to note that the severity of ME/CFS for a given person can fluctuate on a daily basis. Many of our Study 2 participants described a lack of consistency in their symptoms from one day to the next, a phenomenon that has been observed in other chronic conditions [12,56].…”

“…Study 3 revealed specific positive and negative design features through participants' responses to a series of commercial apps. Collectively, our studies illustrate the specific needs of people with ME/CFS and provide further evidence that chronic conditions bring unique concerns that must influence technology design [11,56].…”

“…For example, users could explicitly disable motivational prompts on bad days, or could receive recommendations for more demanding selfmanagement tasks on better days. Similar guidelines have been proposed for apps to help people with Parkinson's Disease [56], suggesting that this strategy may benefit a range of chronic health conditions.…”

“…While self-management can be achieved through the use of generic solutions (e.g. smartphone apps [38]), previous work has demonstrated the need to design around the symptoms of a given condition and promote self-care in light of those symptoms [11,56,58,59]. However, designers may struggle to create tailored support for ME/CFS without a clear understanding of patients' needs and goals for self-management.…”