Usability-testing healthcare software with nursing informatics students in distance education: A case study

For two years, the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center nursing informatics program has joined with McKesson, a leading vendor of health care provider software, to simultaneously teach distance education students about user-centered design and to improve the usability of McKesson's products. This paper describes lessons learned in this industry-education partnership. We have found that usability testing with nursing informatics students who are also experienced nurses compares well to testing with nonstudent nurses in terms of data collected, although there can be differences in how the data are interpreted organizationally and in the constraints on the data collection process. The students find participation in a remote usability test of health care software to be an engaging and helpful part of their coursework.