Charles R. Lammers, BS, BS
University of Missouri Hospital and Clinics

Medical Student Seeks Electronic Resource

ABSTRACT

Although computer resources are great it is important to remember that the medical students are not computer genius's. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate a user interface that is truly user friendly. The fundamental building blocks are outlined and portable to other systems.

PAPER

Introduction

With time, effort and money computers can do anything. Networks today are sophisticated and complex enough to support multiple platforms, multiple production software products, and links to resources external to the local network. Typically these networks are administrated (understood) by only one individual. It is this system administrators duty to manage network resources for end users. More often than not the system administrator is two days late and two dollars short of having everything up to date and working consistently. There just isn't enough time.

The answer is priority. All people with too much to do in too little time prioritize to get the most important jobs done first. In the frenzy to meet functionality deadlines ease of use quickly slides. In a public computing environment ease of use is just as important as functionality. If a computer resource isn't easy to use it's the same as not working either way, nothing is accomplished. A major contributor to ease of use is the quality of system prompts, bulletins, and requests. It is the assertion of this paper that improvements in system messages directly increase user satisfaction, application use, and overall efficiency while decreasing the burdens an expanding system places on support staff.

Results

The concept of increasing ease of use through improved prompts, bulletins, and requests was implemented in July 1994 at the University of Missouri Medical School. Since the implementation overall application use has gone up by 164% and some individual applications have gone up by as much as 70%.

The Medline searching software OVID at our institution is located on a network external to the student terminals. The previous link to the OVID software was easy to setup but untimely and difficult to end users. The current link was difficult and time consuming to setup but is extremely easy and intuitive to the student. Use of the OVID software increased from 1,748 to 2,978 executions per six months (70% increase).

The virus scanner F-Prot is used on our network. The message displayed when a virus is found is a screen full of text giving details about the virus and how to remove it. The users were simply incapable of reading a screen of text when plainly displayed at the bottom of the screen was "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE". The best solution in this case was to add an automatic messenger system to notify the system administrator of the problem.

The login screen for the student network was kept as simple as possible. The login screen has nothing on it but a logo and a one sentence instruction. Simple concise screens are able to communicate important information which is typically lost in a lengthy more complete message. Although all networks experience consistent growth we are able to minimize the impact on the support staff by paying more attention to the quality of system messages.

Guidelines For More Friendly Messages

Make the resources easy for the users. People want to use computers to do their work but are frustrated quickly when burdened with a cumbersome interface. It is a system administrator duty to make resources not only operational but easy to use. The computers must work well and easily.

Here are four basic policies that can be used to guide the design of prompts, bulletins, and requests.
  1. Timely exchange of information. Do not request information or display messages until the time of its relevance.
  2. Avoid busy screens. Too much information is disregarded. Only display important information. Display extensive information only on request.
  3. Reserve system beeps for warnings or critical situations. Excessive beeping becomes an annoyance and is ignored.
  4. Design well worded prompts directed to the entry level user, not yourself. System administrators sometimes forget that entry level users are unfamiliar with computer terminology.
Conclusion

Computer use and user satisfaction can be increased by improving system prompts, bulletins, and requests. Four general rules can be applied to most information exchanges between a network and a user.
  1. Timely exchange of information.
  2. Avoid busy screens.
  3. Reserve system beeps for warnings or critical situations.
  4. Design well worded prompts directed to the entry level user, not yourself.
An initiative at the University of Missouri Medical School to improve information exchange messages allowed for a 164% increase in application use and a minimized increase in use support.

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