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Effectiveness and User Satisfaction from a Usability Evaluation of a Veterans Benefits Letter

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Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare and Medical Devices (AHFE 2017)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 590))

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Abstract

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) responds to a Veteran’s request for benefits with an individual letter. Veterans have expressed concern that the letter is confusing, and agency officials believe that a clearer response letter may reduce the number of appeals they receive. We employed usability techniques such as heuristic evaluation and usability testing to create and evaluate alternate letter formats. This evaluation compared the original format to three different proposed formats for comprehension and user satisfaction. Measures of effectiveness revealed no statistically significant differences between the letter formats. However, measures of user satisfaction showed that Veterans greatly preferred two of the new redesigns. Mapping Veterans’ comments to usability heuristics provided insight into the letter redesign process.

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References

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the VBA ADL group and all the Veterans who participated in this usability effort.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Engineering Resource Center, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Nancy J. Lightner, Nsikak E. Inyang & Dennis Lofton

  2. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for Patient Safety, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Helen J. A. Fuller

  3. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Informatics and Analytics, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Kyle D. Maddox

Authors
  1. Nancy J. Lightner
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  2. Helen J. A. Fuller
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  3. Kyle D. Maddox
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  4. Nsikak E. Inyang
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  5. Dennis Lofton
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helen J. A. Fuller .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

    Vincent Duffy

  2. Center for Applied Systems Engineering, Veterans Affairs, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

    Nancy Lightner

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© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG (outside the USA)

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Lightner, N.J., Fuller, H.J.A., Maddox, K.D., Inyang, N.E., Lofton, D. (2018). Effectiveness and User Satisfaction from a Usability Evaluation of a Veterans Benefits Letter. In: Duffy, V., Lightner, N. (eds) Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare and Medical Devices. AHFE 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 590. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60483-1_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60483-1_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60482-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60483-1

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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