3 research outputs found
bump2bump: Designing and Evaluating Technology to Promote Maternal Wellbeing in the Transition to Motherhood
The notion of wellbeing is synonymous with feeling competent, supported and satisfied with one’s life. Understanding how to sustain one’s own wellbeing is important at times of significant life change. The transition to motherhood is characterised by major emotional and physiological changes, which can impact on maternal subjective wellbeing and affect pregnancy outcomes. While Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has begun to address some of the challenges in the prevention and treatment of affective disorders in vulnerable perinatal groups, approaches that promote holistic maternal wellbeing in the low-risk majority have received less attention. This thesis draws on the multidisciplinary legacy of digital intervention development, utilising best practice from eHealth and HCI. Six studies using quantitative and qualitative methods were conducted. Study 1 was a systematic, interdisciplinary literature review, which proposed an integrated framework of factors involved in the successful development and evaluation of digital perinatal wellbeing resources. Study 2 used qualitative methods to explore the contextualised usage of digital resources by perinatal women. Studies 3, 4 and 5 involved the iterative development and formative evaluation of a prototype (bump2bump). Study 6 used mixed methods to explore the longitudinal, in-the-wild usage of bump2bump by a group of women as they became mothers. This thesis contributes to current discourse in HCI on how technology might be used positively and presents recommendations regarding the development and use of digital resources in first time pregnancy. Digital resources are increasingly relied upon when community services are lacking, and usage of such resources is particularly nuanced at the transition to motherhood. Design features that support users’ trust in content, facilitate face-to-face interaction with local similar others, and provide brief, practical information were found to be most important in meeting user needs. These findings can be used to inform the development and evaluation of digital perinatal wellbeing resources
Enhancing Questionnaire Design Through Participant Engagement to Improve the Outputs of Evaluation.
Questionnaires are habitual choices for many user experience evaluators,
providing a well-recognised and accepted, fast and cost effective method of
collecting and analysing data. However, despite frequent and widespread use
in evaluation, reliance on questionnaires can be problematic. Satisficing,
acquiescence bias and straight lining are common response biases
associated with questionnaires, typically resulting in suboptimal responses
and provision of poor quality data. These problems can relate to a lack of
engagement with evaluation tasks, yet there is a lack of previous research
that has attempted to alleviate these limitations by making questionnaires
more fun or enjoyable to enhance participant engagement.
This research seeks to address whether ‘user evaluation questionnaires can
be designed to be engaging to improve optimal responding. The aim of this
research is to investigate if response quality can be improved through
enhancing questionnaire design both to reduce common response biases and
to maintain participant engagement. The evaluation context for this study was
provided by MIXER, an interactive, narrative-based application for intercultural
sensitivity learning, used and evaluated by 9-11 year old children in the
classroom context.
A series of Participatory Design studies with children investigated
engagement and optimal responding with questionnaires. These initial studies
informed the design of a series of questionnaires created in the form of three
workbooks that were used to evaluate MIXER with over 400 children.
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A mixed methods approach was used to evaluate the questionnaires. Results
demonstrate that by making questionnaire completion more enjoyable data
quality is improved. Response biases are reduced, quantitative data are more
complete and qualitative responses are more verbose and meaningful
compared to standard questionnaires. Further, children reported that
completing the questionnaires was a fun and enjoyable activity that they
would wish to repeat in the future.
As a discipline in its own right, evaluation is under-investigated. Similarly user
evaluation is not evaluated with a lack of papers considering this issue in this
millennium. Thus, this research provides a significant contribution to the field
of evaluation, highlighting that the outputs of user evaluation with
questionnaires are improved when participant engagement informs
questionnaire design. The result is a more positive evaluation experience for
participants and in return a higher standard of data provision for evaluators
and R&D teams