Digital Cross-Channel Usability Heuristics: Improving the Digital Health Experience

The number of ways consumers of health information access digital content has grown rapidly in recent years. People seek information using various hardware devices (e.g., computer, tablet, phone), which can support multiple digital media platforms (e.g., browser, apps, texting/short message service [SMS], email, social media). Users expect to be able to access information from one or more of these digital channels at any time and from any place. For this reason, public health organizations must create a unified experience across all their digital channels to support the on-demand needs of those seeking health information. Though only in the past few years have many organizations started to think about all their channels together as a larger digital ecosystem. A cross-channel (CC) approach is needed to ensure that all channels are unified, seamless, and consistent. However, this approach is resource and time intensive, and because it's a relatively recent trend in the digital world, organizations often don't have the resources allocated for this need. Tools for developing, managing, and improving a CC experience are scarce. Most digital CC research has been focused on e-commerce, leaving a gap in the literature relating to CC experiences with health communication and behavioral health interventions. This paper proposes a process to identify and prioritize user task and channel relationships with a set of newly developed CC heuristics applied to these priority needs. This process is in the context of a digital public health program. Although this approach was developed from a public health perspective, it can be applicable to a wide range of public and commercial digital services or products.