A pragmatic methodical framework for the user-centred development of an electronic process support for the sleep laboratory patients’ management

OBJECTIVE: Limited capacities and ineffective care pathways result in long waiting times for patients and sporadic treatment controls in sleep medicine. As one objective of the ‘Telesleep Medicine’ project, a portal should be developed, which supports sleep specialists in an efficient and resource-saving patient management. On account of the limited project timeframe, the ‘classical’ user-centred design and evaluation methods could not be comprehensively implemented. Therefore, a pragmatic methodical framework was developed. METHODS: For the iterative development of the portal, a combination of low-cost and quick-to-implement methods was used. In chronological order, these were: context interviews, personas, the development of an as-is model, a web search of design standards and good design aspects of similar systems, the development of a to-be model, the creation of an overarching mind map, and the iterative creation of mockups with simplified usability walkthroughs. RESULTS: The feasibility of the pragmatic methodological framework for the development of a prototype for the portal was demonstrated. The used method combination resulted in a prototype based on the needs and requirements of the sleep specialists, taking into account their specific workflow and the technical implementation conditions. CONCLUSIONS: The presented pragmatic methodological framework can be a valuable resource for developers of comparable projects. The combination of methods worked well together regarding the limited timeframe and resources for concept development. For the future, we plan to implement and test the portal in the clinical field and thus enrich our framework with additional methods.