Designing and Evaluating Online Health Consultation Interfaces: A Perspective of Physician-Patient Power Asymmetry

Abstract

Online health consultation (OHC) platforms are widely used telemedicine services in China, and the number of active users has grown rapidly over the past 5 years. OHCs support various types of medical consultations, such as diagnosis and treatment advice, with registered physicians. However, the physician-patient power asymmetry that persists in face-to-face medical consultations has received little attention in telemedicine environments such as OHCs. This paper aims to explore how user interface (UI) design can approach the issue of power asymmetry in OHCs. First, a workshop (N=7), consisting of a focus group and a nominal brainstorming session, was organised to explore user needs, generate and discuss UI design solutions when considering power asymmetry. Study 2 is a Wizard-of-Oz design study (N=30), where the first step was to design a prototype of the OHC with two possible UI solutions (i.e. informing and prompting). It revealed that these solutions addressed power asymmetry and improved user perceptions of OHCs. This study contributes to the knowledge and implications of how UI design can address power asymmetry in OHCs.

Keywords

• Electronic healthcare
• online health consultation platforms
• user interfaces
• physician-patient power asymmetry
• user-centered design