Case Study: Usability Testing
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Centralis saved the National Kidney Foundation from spending resources on a costly, unnecessary app.
The Challenge
The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is the nation’s leading organization dedicated to enhancing awareness, prevention, and treatment of kidney disease.
To support its mission, the organization provides a wide range of resources and tools for clinicians providing renal care. One such tool, the Pocket Guide app, was designed to help dieticians gather a range of patient information and provide appropriate dietary guidance.
NKF was preparing to re-platform the Pocket Guide to adhere to new App Store requirements. Prior to this major update, the team asked Centralis to gauge the usability and value of the current app.
The Process
Centralis conducted usability testing to assess user comprehension and response to the tool’s content and features, and to highlight opportunities for further enhancement of the revised app.
In these one-on-one, remote sessions, we asked dieticians and nutritionists to complete real-life scenarios to explore how they would use the app while working with renal patients.
Our goal was to assess whether the Pocket Guide app was meeting their needs and to uncover usability issues impacting their experience.
The Impact
Our research revealed that practitioners already had access to many of the tools and resources that the app provided. In our final report, we illustrated that even with changes to the content and structure of the app, participants were unlikely to use it regularly.
Though we were able to provide suggestions for ways to make the app more intuitive, we ultimately recommended retiring the app, and not moving forward with a redesign. We also provided our client with feedback from clinicians about what other tools and information would be valuable when working with renal patients.
Our Value
Centralis’ research with clinicians enabled us to assess both the usability of the Pocket Guide app as well as the perceived value of the tool. By talking with clinicians about their current practices and their needs when working with renal patients, we were able to confidently recommend that our client forgo costly updates to the app.
The National Kidney Foundation decided to follow our recommendation and retire the Pocket Guide app. Instead, they are focusing resources on the development of an entirely new app to help those affected by kidney disease. Centralis continues to partner with them on this endeavor.
we spent a little money to save a lot of money, so thank you!"
- The National Kidney Foundation project team