JOURNAL ARTICLE · EDITORIAL BRIEF
Assessing Perceived Usability: Different Types of Hospital Discharge Instructions for College Students
Madison Roy; Claudia Ziegler Acemyan; Philip Kortum
Journal of User Experience · 19 August 2026
The finding or development
Participants rated short and medium-length instructions as more usable than long instructions. The study found no evidence that photographs, diagrams or handwritten versus pre-printed formats changed perceived usability in this sample.
What supports it
Peer-reviewed within-subjects study with 38 Rice University undergraduates assessing six total-knee-replacement discharge-instruction formats using a modified System Usability Scale.
Reviewed: Full 14-page article and journal metadata reviewed
Why it matters for design
A concrete example of testing high-stakes service content rather than relying on readability conventions alone; useful for health, service and content designers.
Read with this in mind
Small, young, high-literacy student sample; one knee-replacement scenario; online exposure to printed-format materials; perceived usability rather than clinical comprehension or patient outcomes. Findings should not be generalised to older adults, lower-literacy patients or other medical contexts.
Original source
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