Usability Study of a Mobile Application Tool to Aide Therapies Targeting Improvement of Emotional Awareness and Labeling After Brain Injury

Research Objectives: To explore clinician and patient usability of a new mobile application-based intervention, Training to Reconnect with Emotional Awareness Tool (TREAT), designed to be used by therapists treating individuals with brain injury (BI) who have poor emotional self-awareness and labeling, and/or patients with BI who want to practice these skills on their own.

Design: Survey

Setting: Community

Participants: Ten adults comprised of five clinicians (60% speech language pathologists) who primarily treat patients with BI and five adults who have had a mild to severe BI (4 traumatic brain injury; 1 stroke) and were an average of 14 years post-injury (range 7-31 years).

Interventions: TREAT is a mobile/tablet application consisting of video based, interactive exercises that helps patients gain insight into their emotions, increase emotional vocabulary, and improve their ability to communicate.

Main Outcome Measures: Post study system usability questionnaire (PSSUQ) total and subscales (System Usefulness; Information Quality, and Interface Quality), with lower scores indicating better usability (score range 1-7); and qualitative feedback.

Results: Clinician mean PSSUQ Total, System Usefulness, Information Quality, and Interface Quality scores were 1.49, 1.37, 1.65, and 1.45, respectively. Qualitative comments by clinicians included: “Easy to use; Intuitive; Self-paced, interactive scenarios.” As perceived by the patients with BI, the mean PSSUQ Total, System usefulness, Information Quality, and Interface Quality scores were 1.79, 1.40, 2.34, and 1.60, respectively. Qualitative comments by patients included: “Informational; User directed; Personally relatable scenarios.”

Conclusions: Preliminary usability results demonstrate that clinicians and their patients with BI perceive the TREAT application to be easy to use. Qualitative feedback indicates many features that participants liked, as well as future opportunities for enhancement to improve inherent usability. The TREAT app may be an easy-to-use tool for clinicians and patients and its effectiveness when used as part of a larger, more comprehensive treatment is still under investigation, but preliminary results are promising.

Author(s) Disclosures: N/A