"Please, No More GUIs!": A User Study, Prototype Development and Evaluation on the Integration of Attribute-Based Encryption in a Hospital Environment

Usable encryption is a challenging task especially in hospital environments, where on the one hand legal regulations require to apply encryption technologies and on the other special usability requirements have to be fulfilled. A study has to be conducted to identify use cases and requirements and learn how to integrate the encryption technology Attribute-based Encryption in IT processes in a German hospital. A focus group with employees was conducted in order to understand the special characteristics of the hospital's IT environment and how end users interact with software and encryption. Based on the identified requirements an adaptive prototype was implemented and evaluated by applying the cognitive walkthrough.