Identifying Usability Problems of Blood Glucose Tracking Apps for Older Adult Users

Almost two-thirds of adults aged 65 and older in the United States are affected by diabetes or prediabetes (Cowie et al., 2009), and the health consequences of poor glycemic control are severe. Blood glucose tracking applications for mobile devices have the potential to help improve glycemic control but design issues may limit their use by older adults. We examined the usability of three existing blood glucose tracking applications via hierarchical task analysis and heuristic evaluation of their graph displays, and describe the problems we found and their implications for older users. We propose the inclusion of decision aids in the apps to better inform users’ health-based behavior.