I am working on designing of mobile application that will be used by field nurses in a developing country. The application guides the nurse through a series of questions and then gives her a diagnosis and treatment advice. The app is part of a research project and will be used by a limited amount of nurses. I have a major decision to make:
1) Put each question on a separate screen
2) Put similar questions in a group on a single screen, and have much fewer screens.
The advantage of the first decision is that it's much clearer to the user what needs to be answered to move to the next screen. However, in the long run (for an expert user) it seems to me that it will be very daunting to flip through 20-30 question screens, especially in time-constrained setting. Therefore, I'm tending to the second solution.
How can I verify this assumption (and decision)? It seems to me that if I conduct a comparative usability testing now, there is certain chance that as a first-time users, the nurses will prefer the single-question-per-screen version. However, I know that time is major factor for them, and am afraid they will skip using the application in the long run.