How was it for you? Experiences of participatory design in the UK health service

Improving co-design methods implies that we need to understand those methods, paying attention to not only the effect of method choices on design outcomes, but also how methods affect the people involved in co-design. In this article, we explore participants' experiences from a year-long participatory health service design project to develop ‘Better Outpatient Services for Older People’. The project followed a defined method called experience-based design (EBD), which represented the state of the art in participatory service design within the UK National Health Service. A sample of participants in the project took part in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their involvement in and their feelings about the project. Our findings suggest that the EBD method that we employed was successful in establishing positive working relationships among the different groups of stakeholders (staff, patients, carers, advocates and design researchers), although conflicts remained throughout the project. Participants' experiences highlighted issues of wider relevance in such participatory design: cost versus benefit, sense of project momentum, locus of control, and assumptions about how change takes place in a complex environment. We propose tactics for dealing with these issues that inform the future development of techniques in user-centred healthcare design

Is participatory design associated with the effectiveness of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion? : a meta-analysis

Background: Serious digital games can be effective at changing healthy lifestyles, but large differences in their effectiveness exist. The extent of user involvement in game design may contribute to game effectiveness by creating a better fit with user preferences. Participatory design (PD), which represents active user involvement as informant (ie, users are asked for input and feedback) or codesigner (ie, users as equal partners in the design) early on and throughout the game development, may be associated with higher game effectiveness, as opposed to no user involvement or limited user involvement. Objective: This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis examining the moderating role of PD in the effectiveness of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion. Methods: Four databases were searched for peer-reviewed papers in English that were published or in press before October 2014, using a (group-) randomized controlled trial design. Effectiveness data were derived from another meta-analysis assessing the role of behavior change techniques and game features in serious game effectiveness. Results: A total of 58 games evaluated in 61 studies were included. As previously reported, serious digital games had positive effects on healthy lifestyles and their determinants. Unexpectedly, PD (g=0.075, 95% CI 0.017 to 0.133) throughout game development was related to lower game effectiveness on behavior (Q=6.74, P<.05) than when users were only involved as testers (g=0.520, 95% CI 0.150 to 0.890, P<.01). Games developed with PD (g=0.171, 95% CI 0.061 to 0.281, P<.01) were also related to lower game effectiveness on self-efficacy (Q=7.83, P<.05) than when users were not involved in game design (g=0.384, 95% CI 0.283 to 0.485, P<.001). Some differences were noted depending on age group, publication year of the study, and on the specific role in PD (ie, informant or codesigner), and depending on the game design element. Games developed with PD were more effective in changing behavioral determinants when they included users in design elements on game dynamics (beta=.215, 95% CI .075 to .356, P<.01) and, more specifically, as an informant (beta=.235, 95% CI .079 to .329, P<.01). Involving users as informants in PD to create game levels was also related to higher game effectiveness (Q=7.02, P<.01). Codesign was related to higher effectiveness when used to create the game challenge (Q=11.23, P<.01), but to lower game effectiveness when used to create characters (Q=4.36, P<.05) and the game world (Q=3.99, P<.05). Conclusions: The findings do not support higher effectiveness of games developed with PD. However, significant differences existed among PD games. More support was found for informant roles than for codesign roles. When PD was applied to game dynamics, levels, and game challenge, this was associated with higher effectiveness than when it was applied to game aesthetics. Since user involvement may have an important influence on reach, adoption, and implementation of the intervention, further research and design efforts are needed to enhance effectiveness of serious games developed with PD

Use of nonintrusive sensor-based information and communication technology for real-world evidence for clinical trials in dementia

Cognitive function is an important end point of treatments in dementia clinical trials. Measuring cognitive function by standardized tests, however, is biased toward highly constrained environments (such as hospitals) in selected samples. Patient-powered real-world evidence using information and communication technology devices, including environmental and wearable sensors, may help to overcome these limitations. This position paper describes current and novel information and communication technology devices and algorithms to monitor behavior and function in people with prodromal and manifest stages of dementia continuously, and discusses clinical, technological, ethical, regulatory, and user-centered requirements for collecting real-world evidence in future randomized controlled trials. Challenges of data safety, quality, and privacy and regulatory requirements need to be addressed by future smart sensor technologies. When these requirements are satisfied, these technologies will provide access to truly user relevant outcomes and broader cohorts of participants than currently sampled in clinical trials

Dynamic ePROM mobile application to improve diabetes consultations. Incorporating patient-gathered data into ePROMs

People with diabetes live a life of constant need to monitor and manage their illness. Unfortunately, a large number of people with diabetes suffer from diabetes-related distress and depression. A better diabetes consultation can directly impact the health of people with diabetes, both mentally and physically. In this thesis, healthcare practices that previous studies have reported lead to a successful diabetes consultation with an improved health outcome are identified through literature review. The findings are used as the inspiration for designing and implementing a dynamic electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROM) mobile application. The application promotes the identified healthcare practices by using the patient-gathered data of each user and tailoring the contents of their questionnaire to them. The application is usability tested with the System Usability Scale is deemed to have good usability (83.75/100) and be a facilitator for better consultations

Systematic Review of Usability Engineering Management Studies for the Aging Population -UEM4Agin

Usability management is one of the core elements of any software to make it efficient and effective. Unfortunately, most of the time usability as well as its management is neglected while developing software that may result as ineffective and inefficient software design. In different eras different researchers performed studies to highlight the management of usability and to show its importance. Due to the increase in the aging population, the concern for the aging population assistances of each equipment becomes to be necessary. Number of Steps has been taken so far to help out the aging population but remained limited to visual considerations, such as stronger contrasts or larger characters on the displays and printing, or such physical characteristics as the ease for pressing buttons. In this paper, our focus is to perform a systematic review (SR) of usability management specifically for the aging population/senior citizens and its limitations. The systematic review aims to address three research questions: 1) What is the current status of usability management/usability engineering management research for the aging population/senior citizen around the globe? As we found that the literature on usability management for the aging population began in 1992 and increased thereafter, there is a lack of organized research teams and dedicated usability management journals for researching the aging population. High-impact theoretical studies are scarce. On the application side, no original and systematic research frameworks have been developed. The understanding and definition of usability and usability management is not well synchronized with international norms. 2) What are the existing methods, approaches, frameworks and practices that are currently being used in usability engineering management for the aging population? 3) What are the limitations of usability engineering management for the aging population/senior citizen? Purpose of this study is to identify the current research problems, existing studies for providing valid solution to these problems and will find out the limitations of existing work for covering the existing problems in usability engineering management specifically for the aging population. This will be done by performing quantitative literature of different databases and all the results will be gathered by analyzing and summarizing the statistical data using “R Studio”. Remedial techniques for handling the limitation of usability engineering management will be planned in future for the aging population

Patient-centered healthcare service development: a literature review

Patient centred services and patient experiences have increasingly been related to service quality and efficiency of care. As a way to have patient centred services, healthcare organizations started involving patients in service improvement. Proper service design is another factor that influences service quality. Healthcare services, however, have presented issues in this aspect. Human Centred Design approaches can be a way for healthcare organisations to properly design services and deliver patient centred care. In this paper, we investigate through a literature review, what methods have been used to design or improve healthcare services and how they contributed to patient centred care. With literature analysis, we identified that Service Design, co-design and other design related approaches were used to bring patient participation, and highlighted improvements and barriers involved in their use. Although these processes faced some barriers, they had positive effects to services being patient centred, improving patient satisfaction and care. Despite the effort of using structured approaches to patient participation and service improvement, the organizations might still be (re)designing their services with inadequate processes

Inclusion in Virtual Reality Technology: A Scoping Review

Despite the significant growth in virtual reality applications and research, the notion of inclusion in virtual reality is not well studied. Inclusion refers to the active involvement of different groups of people in the adoption, use, design, and development of VR technology and applications. In this review, we provide a scoping analysis of existing virtual reality research literature about inclusion. We categorize the literature based on target group into ability, gender, and age, followed by those that study community-based design of VR experiences. In the latter group, we focus mainly on Indigenous Peoples as a clearer and more important example. We also briefly review the approaches to model and consider the role of users in technology adoption and design as a background for inclusion studies. We identify a series of generic barriers and research gaps and some specific ones for each group, resulting in suggested directions for future research

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation