Avaliação da comunicabilidade em um protótipo de sistema hospitalar

Abstract

Computer systems become increasingly important in people's lives. It is important to facilitate the processes in daily activities, such as work and study. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the communicability of the prototype of the hospital system of Aracoiaba city at Ceará state. Communicability is a concept that means the ability of the interface to communicate to the user the designer's intentions. The term communicability is proposed by Semiotics Engineering, that relates to communication between designer, user and system. It is a theory that arises from the Human-Computer Interaction. The human-computer interaction is an area that focus in the interaction between people and machines. The human-computer interaction is based in Semiotics, a discipline that studies the signs. This research is qualitative in nature. Five participants were recruited to perform the tests. The tests were conducted in a controlled environment, because we needed no interruptions that could influence the results. Participants underwent doing some activities proposed in three fictional scenarios, but representing an actual situation of use. After analyzing these tests, we concluded that the system interface caused some problems that prevent users from carrying out their activities smoothly.