I came across an article about the probable fastest typist on an iPhone! Everyone typing on a mobile device is definitely using the two thumb approach, as do I on my Nokia E63 to type, which does have a full keyboard, not a touch screen (not my preference), but look at this guy go! Ever consider trying the two thumb method on your PC?!

From a usability perspective, we’ve tried to do many things that would make the use of Therap’s services faster. One of the main concerns was with our Health Tracking application and how data entry there could be made faster. That actually spurred us on a totally wild spree and we came up with what you see here:

We first came up with one idea for a bar that stays on top of the screen, which allows users to easily access 4 things, and once selected, it stays until something is changed. Those 4 things were:
1. Programs
2. Name of an Individial
3. Choice of a module (e.g. – within Health Tracking it could be vital signs, height/weight, or appointments among many)
4. Choice of a task – creating a new form, accessing the worklist, searching etc.
(The full prototype can be accessed from here)

So, the idea was for program based data entry about an individual, a user could select a program from a list, and then start typing in an individual’s name in the Individual box, which would then pull up a list of names as the staff person is typing. Without leaving a page, these two steps are taken care of. Then comes the matter of selecting the appropriate module, and task. Instantly, it was plain to see that this is something that could be generally used for individual centric data entry! If you go through the full prototype you can play around with bits of dummy data we’ve put in for demonstrating the features we were thinking up. The ‘faster’ here would have been achieved by eliminating the need to go back to the FirstPage to access another module. It changes the whole flow of selecting a module’s action, e.g. clicking on New or Search, and then getting to a list of programs, and then onto the form where you select an individual (with some exceptions).

While developing this would have been a heavy lifting for the time, little ideas from the concept stayed on and got implemented. This was mainly achieved by utilizing the ‘Done Pages’. That’s the page you reach after you’ve completed working on a particular form. E.g.:

This particular done page is from the Health Tracking suite of modules and you can quickly switch to a different Health Tracking form for the same program (click on a module name) or a different one (select program from the drop down menu, then click the module name). And for each module, there are different options provided on the done page depending on what makes sense.

We also added the Quick Links menu which takes out the need to go back to the FirstPage on some occassions after completing one task:

There are some forms in Therap which are very very long. Forms are usually split into sections and much scrolling would be necessary to go back and forth between sections. For that, we’ve added the Jump To menus, as shown below:

This is from the ISP Plan module, which has two sections and many subsections. while at any one of those places, the users are presented with the Jump To link clicking which reveals this menu, then another click takes them to the section they need to be in. We provided similar menus inside MARs to jump between medications on the page in case the page is too long with multiple medications listed. GERs also have this kind of menus to jump to other sections.

Overtime we will continue to try and provide you features that make your documentation faster and easier and your ideas are also welcome on the subject, either here or on Therap Ideas! Happy Theraping!

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