BACKGROUND Lack of usability can be a major barrier for the rapid adoption of mobile services. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the usability of Mobile Health applications in Bangladesh. METHOD We followed a 3-stage approach in our research. First, we conducted a keyword-based application search in the popular app stores. We followed the affinity diagram approach and clustered the found applications into nine groups. Second, we randomly selected four apps from each group (36 apps in total) and conducted a heuristic evaluation. Finally, we selected the highest downloaded app from each group and conducted user studies with 30 participants. RESULTS We found 61% usability problems are catastrophe or major in nature from heuristic inspection. The most (21%) violated heuristic is aesthetic and minimalist design. The user studies revealed low System Usability Scale (SUS) scores for those apps that had a high number of usability problems based on the heuristic evaluation. Thus, the results of heuristic evaluation and user studies complement each other. CONCLUSION Overall, the findings suggest that the usability of the mobile health apps in Bangladesh is not satisfactory in general and could be a potential barrier for wider adoption of mobile health services.

中文翻译：

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调查孟加拉国移动医疗应用程序的可用性。

背景技术缺乏可用性可能是快速采用移动服务的主要障碍。因此，本文的目的是调查孟加拉国移动医疗应用程序的可用性。方法我们在研究中采用了3个阶段的方法。首先，我们在热门应用商店中进行了基于关键字的应用搜索。我们遵循了相似性图方法，并将找到的应用程序分为九组。其次，我们从每个组中随机选择了四个应用程序（总共36个应用程序）并进行了启发式评估。最后，我们从每个组中选择了下载量最高的应用，并与30名参与者进行了用户研究。结果我们从启发式检查中发现61％的可用性问题是灾难性的或严重的。违反启发式方法的最多（21％）是美学和简约设计。用户研究显示，基于启发式评估，那些具有大量可用性问题的应用程序的系统可用性等级（SUS）得分较低。因此，启发式评估和用户研究的结果是相辅相成的。结论总体而言，调查结果表明，孟加拉国移动医疗应用程序的可用性总体上并不令人满意，并且可能成为广泛采用移动医疗服务的潜在障碍。