Identifying Digital Rhetoric in the Telemedicine User Interface

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2023

Identifying Digital Rhetoric in the Telemedicine User Interface

Jessica Lynn Campbell University of Central Florida

Abstract

Telemedicine is an alternative healthcare delivery system whereby patients access digital technology to consult with a physician virtually. Patients first interact with telemedicine via a consumer-facing website. Telemedicine promises numerous benefits to patients, such as increased access to healthcare, yet poor usability of the telemedicine user interface (UI) may hinder patient acceptance and adoption of the service. The telemedicine UI moderates patients’ ability to utilize telemedicine, and therefore it must be usable, but it must also be rhetorical to motivate patients to perform certain actions. Digital rhetoric refers to UI elements that influence user actions and knowledge and is tied to usability because of these same human–computer interaction (HCI) factors. This study examined the usability of three telemedicine provider UIs and by identifying usability problems, reveals digital rhetoric that is significant to telemedicine UIs. The article concludes by offering heuristics of digital rhetoric that lead to optimal usability.

Journal: Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published: 2023-04-01
DOI: 10.1177/00472816221125184
Open Access: Closed
Topics: digital rhetoric multimodality technical communication

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

Johnson (2026)

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Caravella et al. (2026)

Accessibility in virtual reality: A multimodal user experience framework for co…

Computers and Composition

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