Usability for novices and experts: A layered design in a case study in Malawi

This paper presents initial findings from a project in Malawi to develop and implement a simple application for making league tables in the health sector. League tables, sometimes also called scorecards, are tables that compare various entities according to several indicators, and rank them from best to worst performers. Prior work in Malawi has suggested that these tables would be useful at both national and local levels, and should therefore be customizable so that different users can make their own tables, based on the health indicators of their choice. A main finding from this project is that usability and learnability for novice users must be balanced against the request for more advanced features from expert users. This was achieved through designing the app with a novice and an expert layer. The expert layer concerned configuration of the league tables. Configuration or customization is a general functionality in many applications and may thus be segregated in an expert layer.