DQ 2 : Describe one technology that you use on a daily basis that you dislike or that is dissatisfying in some manner.
This prompt reads like an invitation to complain, and that is the trap. It sits in a health-care informatics course, so the marks are in diagnosing which usability principle the technology breaks — and in changing exactly one thing.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 4, 2026
What DNP 805 Topic 7 DQ 2 is really testing
Nothing in the wording of this prompt tells you it is an informatics assignment. It asks about a technology you dislike, in the first person, with no scholarly framing at all — so the natural response is a complaint. That response is the failure mode, and it is a failure of register rather than effort: a post can be detailed, honest and fluent about why a piece of software is maddening and still earn very little, because describing frustration is not the same as diagnosing a defect.
The difference is vocabulary. It's slow and it annoys me reports a feeling. It gives no confirmation that the order was accepted, so I re-enter it and create a duplicate names a mechanism — and that mechanism has a standard name, visibility of system status, the first of Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics. Those ten heuristics are the working vocabulary of interaction design, and using them turns a personal grievance into an analysis a reader can check against their own system. Naming the principle is what moves a post from anecdote to evidence.
Your choice of technology decides how much you can say, and you should choose it strategically rather than honestly-but-unhelpfully. The prompt's only constraints are daily and dislike, so a microwave or a TV remote technically qualifies — and leaves you with a post that has no informatics content in it, because there is no literature, no workflow and no consequence to reach for. A system you actually touch every shift gives you all three: the EHR, barcode medication administration, an infusion pump library, the patient portal, the scheduling or staffing app.
That choice also unlocks the move that separates a doctoral post from an undergraduate one — scaling personal friction into system consequence. This is not a matter of opinion, and you can be specific: US physicians rated their EHRs 45.9 on the System Usability Scale, which is a grade of F and the bottom 9% of every system ever benchmarked; nurses rated theirs 57.6, still an F. In the same studies each single point of better usability carried 2–3% lower odds of professional burnout. Your irritation is a measured, benchmarked property of the system with a workforce cost attached, and saying so is the point at which the post starts sounding like informatics.
Finally, read the last sentence literally. It says name one element you would change. Posts that offer a wishlist of five improvements have answered a more comfortable question and defended none of them properly. Pick the single change that follows from the defect you diagnosed, and be honest about what it would cost — a change that removes friction for you and adds a click for the pharmacist is a trade-off, not an improvement, and saying so is a strength.
Likely learning objectives
- Convert a subjective complaint into a usability critique by naming the specific heuristic or design principle the technology violates, rather than reporting the frustration it causes.
- Select a technology whose analysis can carry informatics content — an interface with a documented workflow, a literature and measurable consequences — instead of one that merely satisfies the prompt's wording.
- Connect individual friction to system-level outcomes such as documentation burden, workaround behaviour, error risk and clinician burnout, which is the doctoral-level move this course expects.
- Likely assessed on whether exactly one change is proposed and defended, given the prompt asks for one element and names it in the singular.
- Tends to be rewarded when the proposed change is traced back to the diagnosed defect and its trade-offs are acknowledged, rather than presented as costless.
Assignment instructions
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
DNP 805 Topic 7 Discussion 2 DQ 2 : Describe one technology that you use on a daily basis that you dislike or that is dissatisfying in some manner. Describe one technology that you use on a daily basis that you dislike or that is dissatisfying in some manner. What features or elements of that technology make it difficult, frustrating, or not enjoyable to use? Name one element of the technology you would change to improve its functionality for your needs?
The three things this discussion asks for
- 01One named technology that you personally use on a daily basis and find dissatisfying.
- 02The specific features or elements that make it difficult, frustrating, or not enjoyable to use — the prompt asks for features, not an overall verdict.
- 03One element of that technology you would change to improve its functionality for your needs, stated in the singular as the prompt requires.
- 04Note: this brief states no word count, no source minimum and no formatting requirement. Check your course announcements and rubric for the discussion-post standards that apply, since they are set at course level rather than in this prompt.
Turning a daily frustration into a usability critique
Name the technology and your actual daily use of it
State what it is, your role when you use it, and roughly how many times a shift or day you touch it. Frequency is what makes a small defect consequential, so quantify it rather than saying 'often'.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That the technology is genuinely used daily by you in a role context, since the prompt is written in the first person and a system you have only read about cannot support a first-hand usability account.
Describe one concrete interaction that fails
Walk through a single specific episode — the task you were doing, what you clicked or scanned, what the system did, and what you did next. Keep it to one episode; a catalogue of grievances loses the thread.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That a specific, reconstructable interaction is described rather than a general impression, because the diagnosis in the next section has to attach to observable system behaviour.
Diagnose the defect by name
Match the failure to a named usability principle — visibility of system status, error prevention, recognition rather than recall, user control and freedom, match between system and the real world. Say which one and why it applies.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That the critique uses established human-factors vocabulary rather than adjectives, which is the distinction between an informatics analysis and a complaint.
Name the workaround the defect creates
Describe what you or your colleagues actually do to get around it — copy-forward, a paper note, a shared login, scanning the pocket-card barcode instead of the wristband. Workarounds are the clinical evidence that a defect is real.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That the workaround is identified as a safety and data-integrity signal, since documented workarounds are how usability defects convert into patient risk in the informatics literature.
Scale it: from personal friction to system consequence
Connect the defect to measured outcomes — documentation time, task load, error potential, burnout. Cite the SUS benchmarking evidence to show this is a measurable property of the system, not a matter of personal preference.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That individual experience is linked to population-level evidence, which is the doctoral expectation distinguishing a DNP post from an undergraduate reflection.
Propose the one element you would change
State the single change, tie it explicitly to the defect you diagnosed, and say what it would cost — extra clicks elsewhere, a build change, retraining, or a new alert that risks fatigue.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That exactly one element is proposed as the prompt requires, that it follows from the diagnosis rather than arriving fresh, and that its trade-offs are acknowledged rather than assumed away.
Where the EHR usability evidence lives
Recommended databases
- PubMed
- CINAHL Complete
- JAMIA (Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association)
- Nielsen Norman Group
- NIST Publications
Search sequence
- 1.Start with the usability vocabulary, not your technology: read Nielsen's ten heuristics first so you have a name to attach to your defect before you go looking for evidence about it.
- 2.Search 'System Usability Scale' with your clinician group to find the benchmark score for systems like yours — that is what converts your anecdote into a measured property.
- 3.Search your specific technology plus 'workaround' or 'unintended consequences'; the workaround literature is where usability defects are documented as safety events rather than annoyances.
- 4.Check NIST's EHR Usability Protocol for the safety-enhanced usability framing if your technology is a certified clinical system, since it defines what vendors were required to test.
- 5.Note where the evidence is about physicians rather than nurses, or about a different vendor — cite it honestly with that limitation stated rather than implying it was measured on your system.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Nielsen Norman Group · 1994
The ten named principles to diagnose your defect against. Use it to convert 'frustrating' into a specific violation such as visibility of system status or recognition rather than recall. Originally published 1994 and last updated January 2024; it is a practitioner framework, not a clinical evidence source.
The Association Between Perceived Electronic Health Record Usability and Professional Burnout Among US Physicians
Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 95(3), 476-487 · 2020
The benchmark finding for the scaling section: a mean SUS score of 45.9, a grade of F and the bottom 9% of systems, with each 1-point improvement associated with 3% lower odds of burnout. Note this is a physician sample; do not present it as nursing data.
The association between perceived electronic health record usability and professional burnout among US nurses
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(8), 1632-1641 · 2021
The nursing counterpart, and the one to lead with if your technology is a nursing-facing system: mean SUS 57.6, still an F, with each point of better usability associated with 2% lower odds of burnout. Cite alongside the physician study rather than instead of it if you want to show the pattern holds across roles.
Measuring Usability with the System Usability Scale (SUS)
MeasuringU · 2011
How to read a SUS score honestly — 68 is average and a C, raw scores are not percentages, and percentile ranking requires normalisation. Use it so you interpret 45.9 or 57.6 correctly instead of describing them as percentages, which is the common misreading.
(NISTIR 7804) Technical Evaluation, Testing and Validation of the Usability of Electronic Health Records
National Institute of Standards and Technology · 2012
The EHR Usability Protocol — expert review plus validation testing with representative users on realistic tasks. Cite it when you argue your proposed change should be tested rather than assumed, or when you note the system was certified against a usability process that evidently did not catch your defect.
Before you post: the one-element test
Common mistakes
- Writing a complaint instead of a critique. Detail and honesty are not the problem — the problem is that adjectives like 'clunky' and 'slow' describe your feelings, where the assignment wants the named design principle the system violates.
- Choosing a technology that satisfies the prompt but starves the post. A microwave or a TV remote is a daily technology you may genuinely dislike, and it leaves you with no workflow, no literature and no consequence to analyse.
- Proposing several changes when the prompt asks for one element. A wishlist reads as thoroughness and marks as evasion, because none of the five gets defended properly.
- Proposing a change that does not follow from the defect you diagnosed. If the failure was missing feedback, adding a customisable dashboard does not fix it — the change has to answer the diagnosis.
- Presenting the change as costless. Removing a click for you often adds one for pharmacy, or adds an alert to a queue already causing alert fatigue; naming the trade-off is a strength, not an admission.
- Quoting SUS scores as percentages. 45.9 is not 45.9% — it is a score on a 0-100 scale where 68 is average, and the misreading is obvious to anyone who knows the instrument.
- Borrowing the physician burnout data and implying it was measured on nurses. The nursing study exists and reports a different score; use the right one for your population, or cite both and say which is which.
Submission checklist
- The technology is one you genuinely use daily, and you have said how often you touch it.
- One specific interaction is described concretely enough that a reader could picture it happening.
- The defect is named against an established usability principle, not just described as frustrating.
- The workaround the defect produces is identified, and its safety or data-integrity implication is stated.
- At least one piece of measured evidence connects the friction to a system-level outcome, with its population stated.
- Exactly one element is proposed as the change, and it answers the defect you diagnosed.
- The trade-off or cost of that change is acknowledged.
- Any SUS score you quote is described as a score against the 68 average, never as a percentage.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read Brinevia's academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Elias Merritt
BSN, RN, CEN
Emergency nursing, critical care and patient assessment
Elias is a registered nurse with 12 years in emergency and acute care. He writes on emergency care, patient assessment and nursing fundamentals, with a focus on building student confidence through realistic clinical scenarios.
Reviewed by
Dr. Tessa Redmond
DNP, RN, CNE
Evidence-based practice and clinical education
Tessa is a doctorally-prepared nurse educator. She reviews Brinevia content for clinical accuracy and alignment with current evidence-based guidelines.