Codesigned Shared Decision-Making Diabetes Management Plan Tool for Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Their Parents: Prototype Development and Pilot Test

Background: Adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus have difficulty achieving optimal glycemic control, partly due to competing priorities that interfere with diabetes self-care. Often, significant diabetes-related family conflict occurs, and adolescents’ thoughts and feelings about diabetes management may be disregarded. Patient-centered diabetes outcomes may be better when adolescents feel engaged in the decision-making process. Objective: The objective of our study was to codesign a clinic intervention using shared decision making for addressing diabetes self-care with an adolescent patient and parent advisory board. Methods: The patient and parent advisory board consisted of 6 adolescents (teens) between the ages 12 and 18 years with type 1 diabetes mellitus and their parents recruited through our institution’s Pediatric Diabetes Program. Teens and parents provided informed consent and participated in 1 or both of 2 patient and parent advisory board sessions, lasting 3 to 4 hours each. Session 1 topics were (1) patient-centered outcomes related to quality of life, parent-teen shared diabetes management, and shared family experiences; and (2) implementation and acceptability of a patient-centered diabetes care plan intervention where shared decision making was used. We analyzed audio recordings, notes, and other materials to identify and extract ideas relevant to the development of a patient-centered diabetes management plan. These data were visually coded into similar themes. We used the information to develop a prototype for a diabetes management plan tool that we pilot tested during session 2. Results: Session 1 identified 6 principal patient-centered quality-of-life measurement domains: stress, fear and worry, mealtime struggles, assumptions and judgments, feeling abnormal, and conflict. We determined 2 objectives to be principally important for a diabetes management plan intervention: (1) focusing the intervention on diabetes distress and conflict resolution strategies, and (2) working toward a verbalized common goal. In session 2, we created the diabetes management plan tool according to these findings and will use it in a clinical trial with the aim of assisting with patient-centered goal setting. Conclusions: Patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus can be effectively engaged and involved in patient-centered research design. Teens with type 1 diabetes mellitus prioritize reducing family conflict and fitting into their social milieu over health outcomes at this time in their lives. It is important to acknowledge this when designing interventions to improve health outcomes in teens with type 1 diabetes mellitus

Getting personal: exploring the usage of persona in order to optimize the involvement of a living lab panel

iMinds Living Labs started with living lab research in 2009. Living lab research involves gathering user feedback on innovations implemented in a real-life context (Eriksson et al., 2005). This can be facilitated by means of a panel-based approach (Schuurman et al., 2012). In order to keep a panel motivated for participating in living lab research it can be beneficial to generate a sense of belonging to a community. Logghe et al. (2014) examined the motivations and behavior of the panel members and concluded that there are four groups of panel member types, each with their own motivations and behavior patterns. But how can a living lab get to know its panel members better? How can every panel member be approached in their preferred way? How can every panel member be stimulated to keep on participating in living lab research? How can a community feeling be created? In order to gather more information about each panel member type, we developed a four way segmentation of the panel which we translated into four distinct persona. These persona will be used as a basis for community building, a future panel kit, experimenting with research approaches,… supplemented with other methodologies

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

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Movement and Divergent Production, Understanding opportunity for strategic kinesthetic movement during participatory ideation sessions

With strategic kinesthetic movement making its way into education and business, and design thinking also edging into those same fields, it seems natural that the two could be integrated and referenced by facilitators who are responsible for leading a group through participatory ideation sessions. Design Thinking is a human-centered innovation process, which ultimately influences innovation and business strategy. It refers to applying a designer’s sensibility and methods of problem solving to an innovation process.1 Designers reach out to stakeholders within an opportunity space through design research methods. Often times, the designer will take on the role of a facilitator and conduct meetings with the stakeholders in order to gather information, generate ideas, or evaluate specific concepts.2 Facilitated sessions in which all stakeholders have to opportunity to contribute equally are referred to as participatory design process facilitation sessions. Participatory ideation sessions are meetings focused on one stage in a design process; the ideation stage. This research project is focused on the stage in a human-centered innovation process, referred to as the ideation stage, in which ideas are generated with stakeholders. During participatory ideation sessions, facilitators lead groups of participants through organized and strategized agendas, utilizing design research methods with the sole purpose of generating ideas for improving specified opportunity spaces.3 Generating ideas with the stakeholders allows the designer to gain insight into the stake-holder’s point of view, which ultimately aids the designer in creating a meaningful solution to a design problem. The purpose of this design research project is to develop a framework from which facilitators may gain insight and understanding of how to develop their own participatory ideation sessions utilizing strategic kinesthetic movement customized to specific contexts. The development of these participatory ideation sessions will involve the making and manipulation of generative methods and tools revolving around strategic kinesthetic movement. Designers working as facilitators utilize movement for many reasons. Movement increases productivity, confidence, creativity, and focus during facilitated sessions. Movement elevates the average body temperature which is a sign of greater blood circulation, which means more oxygen is arriving at the brain, making concentration easier.4 Movement has also been proven to improve self esteem,5 potentially enabling participants to contribute more ideas without fear of being judged. The absence of judgment allows for an increase in divergent production during participatory ideation sessions. Divergent production is defined as producing from one’s memory storage a number of alternative items of information to meet a certain need, either in exact or in modified form, as in thinking of alternative tools that might be used in opening a package.6 How might designers harness the power of movement during their facilitated sessions

Designing with and for people living with visual impairments: audio-tactile mock-ups, audio diaries and participatory prototyping

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. Methods used to engage users in the design process often rely on visual techniques, such as paper prototypes, to facilitate the expression and communication of design ideas. The visual nature of these tools makes them inaccessible to people living with visual impairments. In addition, while using visual means to express ideas for designing graphical interfaces is appropriate, it is harder to use them to articulate the design of non-visual displays. In this article, we present an approach to conducting participatory design with people living with visual impairments incorporating various techniques to help make the design process accessible. We reflect on the benefits and challenges that we encountered when employing these techniques in the context of designing cross-modal interactive tools

Theory of Change Review: A Report Commissioned by Comic Relief

Comic Relief does three things. It raises much needed cash, it then allocates that cash to projects in the United States and in the poorest countries in the world, and it raises awareness of the issues it feels strongly about. This report is one of a series of Comic Relief commissioned learning reports. Some learning reports aim to bring the impact of and learning from some of the work Comic Relief has funded in helping change lives to a wider audience. Other reports aim to draw together learning on key issues from a range of stakeholders to inform Comic Relief's thinking and promote debate in the sector. This report aims to draw together Comic Relief staff and partners' experiences in using theory of change; to identify others in development that are using theory of change and analyse their different approaches and experience; and to capture learning from everyone to promote debate, and to help inform what agencies using or advocating for the use of theory of change do next. This report was commissioned by Comic Relief and written by Cathy James, an independent consultant. The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Comic Relief

Professional Learning Communities in the Expanded Learning Field

This white paper uses twelve evaluation reports of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) initiatives, as well as interviews with PLC participants and facilitators, to better understand how the PLC model is used in the Expanded Learning field, to demonstrate the benefits to participating staff and expanded learning programs, and to share best practices for youth-serving organizations interested in using PLCs

A Lightweight Co-Construction Activity for Teaching 21st Century Skills at Primary Schools

Employing learning processes that promote 21st Century skills is now a requirement in Finnish schools and elsewhere. Participatory design/co-design activities have shown to foster design thinking and computational thinking skills in primary school level participants, but a lightweight applicable model of such an activity is yet to be presented. We develop a lightweight hybrid co-construction method based on software development via two exploratory case studies in a Finnish primary school. For the purpose of evaluating objectively the motivating effects of our activity, we elaborate upon four concerning dimensions that arise from previous studies. In our resulting activity, an adult programmer is partnered with a group of children to, in this case, construct math games together. The children felt empowered and motivated by working with us in this way, however, further study is required on the effects this kind of an activity has in comparison to alternative teaching methods

External Program Evaluation: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Program in Ethiopia

USAID/Ethiopia commissioned this study to evaluate an ongoing Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) program and to generate findings that could assist in developing monitoring and evaluation indicators for future use. As of 2008, MWA was implementing eight WASH projects in 28 districts, with stated goals of improving access to sustainable and adequate water, improving access to sanitation services, increasing community awareness, and promoting safe hygiene practices. The evaluation calls MWA's progress encouraging overall, but notes that the one to two year planning horizons used were not enough to cause internalized behavior change. Furthermore, the authors recommend investing more in research and development; adopting harmonized approaches and best practices as well as innovative methodologies; building capacity of district water, health, and education offices; and linking the MWA program with other government, USAID, WSP and UNICEF programs