Principles for designing your hospital intranet

When Pocket PCs were first released, their killer app was the promise of wireless browsing. Pocket PCs were slow, unstable, expensive and had few applications. But one thing that Microsoft promised that the machines would do was browse the internet wirelessly. Businesses in general, and hospitals in particular, had made considerable investments in their web sites. Hospitals had set up private networks to provide their clinicians with local directories, guidelines and protocols. Pocket PCs seemed a low-cost way for clinicians to access this information wherever they were on the wards.

The bad news is that Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) is perhaps the worst browser on any mobile device. But the good news is that it is still pretty usable. Furthermore, other software and machines are available that do an even better job.With a little modification, your hospital intranet can become useful to any clinician equipped with a handheld computer.

Right is wrong

The most important law of mobile browsing is that Right is wrong:

Handheld computer users don't mind scrolling up and down, but scrolling left and right is infuriating. Newspaper readers have gotten used to narrow columns of text that they read down, and handheld computer users expect the same from their mobile content. Never make your handheld user scroll to the right.

PIE principles

Because PIE is the commonest and worst browser, this article will focus on its principles. The software operates within a width of 240 pixels, and a height of 320 pixels. When you take into account the scroll bars and Start menu, you have even less space the web page. Here is what the National Center for Biotechnology Information's website looks like on a PC:

Screenshot of www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov on a PC

Aside from local resources, the NCBI's site perhaps the most important destination for clinicians because it contains PubMed. The latter database provides free access to the abstracts of all modern clinical literature, so it is an essential part of evidence-based medicine. Seniors teach from it, juniors learn from it, and all clinicians consult it.

Here's the same website in PIE:

Two screenshots of www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov on PIE
Note how the user must scroll horizontally to read

Quite a contrast between the two views, and PIE is almost useless. The problem is the amount of horizontal scrolling necessary.

Fortunately, PIE has a partial solution. From the View menu, tap Fit to screen. This is the view that you get:

Two screenshots of www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov on PIE
This time the "Fit to screen option" is on

You still need to scroll to the right, but only once. After this, the scrolling is only up and down to read the paragraphs of text. PIE does this by squeezing the text to less than 240 pixels in width. If the text is part of a table, it squeezes each column to within 240 pixels. In this way, PIE can allow designers the control of tables, while providing readers with the convenience of small-screen browsing.

This article will look at three areas that PIE finds difficult:

It will then discuss what you must do to avoid these problems as a web designer. Finally, it is important to realise that there are plenty of other browsers available that do a much better job. Your clinical colleagues will appreciate knowing about them.

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