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Deeply engaging nurses in a participatory co-design process, especially in times of COVID-19, is challenging. In this case study, we shed light on the process of developing a prototype for AR-glasses in nursing. We show the challenges we faced, the methods we used and how they contribute to the core principles of participatory design. A special focus is laid on small-scale interventions with high-impact, that helped us to truly engage users. We introduce empathetic ways to connect contrasting work environments, establish mutual understanding, make the more graspable with playful tools like PLAYMOBIL®, and support co-design development with online formats. Finally, we discuss the transferability to other projects. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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Design probes, an essential research tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, are ancillary "personal"data gathering tools that enable researchers to enter the private world of research participants. This paper compares two case studies of design probes used during the pandemic for radical placemaking in hybrid digital-physical environments: Digital Art Summer School in Northrock, Ireland, with eleven participants, and Chatty Bench Project in Brisbane, Australia, with sixteen participants. The paper further expands on the design methodology of the probes and their deployment during the online radical placemaking projects. From the participant responses to the probes' activities and interviews, both studies demonstrated that the probes fostered placemaking in digital environments during the pandemic. The paper concludes with three lessons on the potential of probes as a critical research instrument to enable creativity, build social capital and create bonds between people and places during uncertain and turbulent times. © 2022 Owner/Author.
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The high prevalence of mental health problems among university students poses a challenge when developing effective interventions, with digital technologies emerging as a potential resource to address this problem. The inclusion of student input in the design and development of such interventions is critical to improving their impact. This study contributed to the initial phase of a research project that aims to adapt and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of an early intervention for anxiety and depression based on digital technologies for university students. Three participatory workshops were conducted with 13 university students in Chile to inquire about the features and content that a mental health mobile app should include to meet their needs and preferences. The workshop transcripts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The results of this study highlight the value of modifications such as the personalisation of some features of the app. The students recommended incorporating topics related to university life and the possibility of contacting a mental health professional, as well as the inclusion of peer interaction or other forms of support.Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
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BACKGROUND: There is an urgent and unmet need for accessible and credible health information within the transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) community. Currently, TGD individuals often seek and must find relevant resources by vetting social media posts. A resource that provides accessible and credible health-related resources and content via a mobile phone app may have a positive impact on and support the TGD population. OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 stay-at-home orders forced a shift in the methods used in participatory design. In this paper, we aimed to describe the web-based participatory methods used to develop the Transgender Health Information Resource. We also described and characterized the web-based engagement that occurred during a single session of the overall design process. METHODS: We planned and conducted web-based design sessions to replace the proposed in-person sessions. We used web-based collaborative tools, including Zoom (Zoom Video Communications), Mural (Mural), REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture; Vanderbilt University), and Justinmind (Justinmind), to engage the participants in the design process. Zoom was used as an integrated platform for design activities. Mural was used to perform exercises, such as free listing, brainstorming, and grouping. REDCap allowed us to collect survey responses. Justinmind was used to create prototypes that were shared and discussed via Zoom. Recruitment was led by one of our community partners, One Colorado, who used private Facebook groups in which web-based flyers were dispersed. The design process took place in several workshops over a period of 10 months. We described and characterized engagement during a single design session by tracking the number of influential interactions among participants. We defined an influential interaction as communication, either verbal or web-based content manipulation, that advanced the design process. RESULTS: We presented data from a single design session that lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes and included 4 participants. During the session, there were 301 influential interactions, consisting of 79 verbal comments and 222 web-based content manipulations. CONCLUSIONS: Web-based participatory design can elicit input and decisions from participants to develop a health information resource, such as a mobile app user interface. Overall, participants were highly engaged. This approach maintained the benefits and fidelity of traditional in-person design sessions, mitigated deficits, and exploited the previously unconsidered benefits of web-based methods, such as enhancing the ability to participate for those who live far from academic institutions. The web-based approach to participatory design was an efficient and feasible methodological design approach.
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BACKGROUND: ACTivate your wellbeing is a digital health and well-being program designed to support and encourage positive lifestyle behavior change. The website includes 5 lifestyle behavior change modules and a 12-week well-being intervention based on acceptance and commitment therapy. It was timely to adapt the resource for a new audience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Young persons' mental health needs have increased substantially, and lifestyle behaviors play a critical role in both mental and physical health statuses. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to adapt an existing health and well-being website for use by young persons aged 16 to 24 years. METHODS: A 3-staged participatory, co-design approach was adopted. The participants reviewed the existing program and provided feedback (stage 1) before cocreating new content (stage 2). Finally, the updated program underwent formative evaluation (stage 3). Two groups were created: one had access for 3 weeks and the other could self-select their study duration. The options were 3 weeks, 60 days, or 90 days. Outcome measures were the Warwick and Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire, and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire version 2. RESULTS: Stage 1 identified that the website was appealing to the new audience (19/24, 79%), and the 3 web-based focus group discussions explored data from the written review in more depth to identify and clarify the main areas for update and adaptation. Overall, 3 themes were developed, and the data informed the creation of 6 tasks for use in 5 web-based co-design workshops. Stage 2 led to the cocreation of 36 outputs, including a new name, new content, scenarios, images, and a new user dashboard, which included streaks and an updated color scheme. After the website update program was completed, 40 participants registered to use the website for formative evaluation (stage 3). Data analysis revealed differences in engagement, completion, and mean well-being after intervention between the 2 groups. The completion rate was 68% in the 3-week duration group, and well-being scores improved after intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Young persons engaged actively with the participatory design process. The participants discussed the updates they desired during the web-based discussions, which worked well via Zoom (Zoom Video Communications Inc) when small groups were used. The participants easily cocreated new content during the web-based co-design workshops. The web-based format enabled a range of participants to take part, share their ideas, search for images, and design digital content creatively together. The Zoom software enabled screen sharing and collaborative whiteboard use, which helped the cocreation process. The formative evaluation suggested that younger users who engage more with the website for a shorter duration may benefit more.
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Objectives: The objective of our research is to study the social organization within institutions welcoming dependent older adults and the potential impact of introducing a social robot. Material(s) and Method(s): In a co-design approach with professionals, the observation of behaviors, regulated by social rules and norms, will allow, in a way coherent with our empirical approach, to question the conditions necessary for the design of an acceptable human-robot interaction. The ethnographic observations, which were cancelled due to the Covid crisis, led us to use the "cultural probes" method combined with interviews, to understand the daily work of health professionals better. Result(s): The analysis of the collected data allows us to identify 5 recurrent themes - Time and personnel, the health situation,1 Communication/Attention, Guiding, Activities - for which we have listed, in this article, the issues encountered, the questions raised and ideas of potential solutions with the use of a social robot. Conclusion(s): The Cultural Probes approach may seem time-consuming and requires a significant investment, but it has allowed us to maintain regular contact during the pandemic. In addition, the qualitative data collected proved to be a good discussion tool.Copyright © 2022 AGBM
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The growth of migrants and refugees puts pressure on the building of temporary settlements. Most are designed based on functional aspects, especially during Covid crisis. Emotional well-being connected to the notion of home is missing, impeding an inclusive community. Being There is a VR-experience of migration spaces developed through participatory-design approaches centred around needs connected to home. Thematic analysis based on 28 interviews with Latin-American migrant/refugee women and volunteers, revealed the meaning of home, based on: culture, temporary transition, togetherness, and journey. The insights were used to create the VR animations (of the journey), the ideal temporary space, the interactions (with migrant voice-overs) and Volumetric-Captured character scenarios. It revealed the importance and possibilities to translate notions of home into VR-experiences to raise empathy and awareness for the importance of designing settlements regarding sense of home and shows how VR helps architects to understand, design and communicate temporary spaces. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted processes interaction designers took for granted, challenging some of our most commonplace design practices. Participatory and situated approaches have been impacted the most: where we engaged stakeholders in-person and in-context, during this time we must co-design remotely and in virtual environments. Such a dramatic change calls for new co-design methods. In this article, we present a novel remote strategy for involving stakeholders to co-design interactive technology: Designerly Tele-Experiences (DTE). Our methodological proposal enables participants to experience early design concepts in-the-wild as a provocation to contribute new ideas that resonate with their experiential preferences. Here we describe the rationale for DTE, unpack how it builds on and extends existing methods, and provide actionable guidelines from our experience of using it in our work. Our contribution will empower interaction designers to embrace participatory and situated approaches even when engaging stakeholders in person is not possible or desirable.
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Algorithms as a component of decision-making in healthcare are becoming increasingly prevalent and AI in healthcare has become a topic of mass consideration. However, pursuing these methods without a human-centered framework can lead to bias, thus incorporating discrimination on behalf of the algorithm upon implementation. By examining each step of the design process from a human-centered perspective and incorporating stakeholder motivations, algorithmic implementation can become vastly useful, and more accurately tailored to stakeholder needs. We examine previous work in healthcare executed with a human-centered design, to analyze the multiple frameworks which effectively create human-centered application, as extended to healthcare. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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Collaborative engagement in research and education often involves the need for a shared workspace among participants. With improved web-based technologies, and limitations to in-person interactions presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, educators and researchers need to adapt their methods and tools to support meaningful engagement. We reflect on our experiences and iterative experiments navigating these challenges in the domains of design education and design research. As design educators, our team utilized various online platforms including video conferencing, whiteboards, spreadsheets, surveys, and polling tools, to support teaching and student collaboration. As design researchers working in the domain of maternal healthcare, we borrowed from our experiences in the classroom and applied some of these tools to our research with patient and clinician stakeholders, to support data collection and research team collaboration. In this paper, we elaborate on these experiences by drawing from examples across our teaching and research activities to share key strengths, challenges, and considerations of the online workspaces, with a particular focus on online whiteboards. We compare the two settings and reflect on barriers and facilitators of online engagement specific to these. Lastly, we suggest recommendations for designing online activities and selecting appropriate online tools based on the objective, contextual needs, and the affordances of tools and activities. Our findings may support decisions of educators, designers, and researchers in planning for online engagement. © Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Disrupt, Innovate, Regenerate and Transform, E and PDE 2022. All rights reserved.
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Participatory design and interdisciplinarity are essential aspects when designing for children with accentuated needs;however, they have been even more relevant during the pandemic. COVID-19 has established structural and social changes in our society (telework, online education, globalization of work schedules, etc.) which have made family conciliation a great difficulty for families with children with accentuated needs, given their low self-autonomy. This situation has reinforced the importance of the interconnected needs and skills of the different agents (parents, children, therapists, teachers, etc.) that are involved in their lives, which, therefore, should be considered when working on the self-autonomy of these children. This work explores how these interconnected experiences should be reflected in product design and the relevance of having participatory design and interdisciplinarity at the core of the process, to create meaningful products that improve the independence of these children. This work is developed by conducting bibliographic research, surveys, and interviews with family members and professionals. It explores the perspectives of different agents on what the pandemic implied and the importance of translating them into design methods. The results showed that the needs of parents, professionals, and children differ from each other;thus, to create products that help these children be more independent, the combination of experiences of the different agents should serve as the basis for the product design. It is a first step toward participatory design and interdisciplinary methods focused on interconnected needs, experiences, and culture to design socially sustainable products. © Common Ground Research Networks, Raquel Cañete, María Estela Peralta, All Rights Reserved.
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The COVID 19 pandemic necessitated a rapid implementation of virtual care within the Canadian healthcare system generating previously unimagined levels of virtual care uptake and accessibility. The transition to virtual care provided benefits for both patients and providers including a reduction in cost, time saved, and greater protection from infection. However, to date, the system in the Canadian province of Ontario has focussed on ‘replacing’ discrete in-person ‘moments’ of care with digital interactions such as phone and video visits. This design research study contributes to the health design community by incorporating a strategic futures approach to existing discussions surrounding virtual care. Collecting, analyzing and adding patient and primary care provider voices through this design research study provides new insights into virtual care experiential gaps and highlights opportunities for virtual care within primary care modalities. As a result of this new data, and through consultation with stakeholders, a roadmap for future virtual care possibilities in Ontario was developed answering noted needs of patients and providers by extending digital health interactions across a broader spectrum of synchronous and asynchronous care modalities and folding in an amalgam of digital, virtual, and in person connection for patient care experiences. [ FROM AUTHOR]
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The breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted people's daily activities from in-person to video-mediated ones. Many people with hearing loss encounter cognitive overload due to ineffective visuals of the videoconferencing interface and therefore find meeting contents difficult to comprehend. This research incorporates a participatory design methodology to investigate the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) users' tacit needs. DHH users demonstrated ways of mitigating their hardships in the workshop, such as emphasizing the visual hierarchy or assigning visual cues to fixed positions. These findings are used in developing design directions for creating a more inclusive online environment. © 2022 Owner/Author.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how our global societies rely upon the care and support of informal (unpaid) caregivers: in the UK alone, there are an estimated 6.5 million informal carers. The caring role is not just precarious, it is often associated with high levels of stress, poor/deteriorating health and crisis points (hospitalisations, worsening of health). Fittingly, there has been much research in recent years focusing on mental health supports. A lesser explored area is physical health and physical activity. To address this, we conducted a real-world feasibility, usability and acceptability study of a novel codesigned digital health app for caregivers to improve levels of physical activity. Our study was designed to test the prototype app use for three weeks, following participants across questionnaires/in app data/qualitative data. Our findings (from 27 caregivers) highlights key knowledge gaps around physical activity-national guidelines were not reaching populations studies and behavioural change techniques hold promise to help support caregivers in the longer term. Our collective results support the acceptability, usability and feasibility of the Carefit app and warrant further investigation.
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COVID-19 , Mobile Applications , COVID-19/epidemiology , Caregivers/psychology , Exercise , Feasibility Studies , Humans , Pandemics , SmartphoneABSTRACT
Software development methods have been evolved to enable producing usable systems rapidly while considering all requirements. Several studies have focused on the need to balance between rapid development and capturing requirements related to user experience and business workflow. This balance has become more urging during COVID19 because many businesses want to quickly transfer to usable electronic systems that are accurate, efficient, easy to learn, satisfy users and support remote work. Therefore, this paper proposes a framework by integrating Rapid Application Development (RAD) method with Participatory Design (PD) method for enabling rapid production of usable systems. Both RAD and PD consist of design stages that can overlap and generate new phases where users participate in the design process and accelerate the production. Five usability tests are also added to the framework to validate the usability of the design at all stages. The Action Research method is used to assess the framework empirically in a context of an urgent need to an electronic system, and qualitative data analyses were conducted. The results show that the framework can be adopted by software companies because it satisfies the requirements of adopting software development methods. Also, the system developed using the framework is usable. The paper concludes that COVID19 affects software development by emphasizing rapid development while maintaining workflow. Also, using video conference for remote design assists in meeting users more frequently and in creating concise requirement documentation. Author
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The latest generations of students are visual learners who are used to animated and interactive visual media. Teachers may, therefore, find it more challenging to make the course content and methods of delivery more engaging for students who prefer animated and interactive educational experiences. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way students approach learning and changed their learning needs and preferences. Educators must employ new learning approaches that draw the students in and encourage them to embrace learning. To help teachers in Bahrain deliver educational content that can engage students in a dynamic way and enhance their motivation, the content from various government school textbooks was converted into animated lessons by art and design students. The main aim was to investigate the effects of these animated lessons on students’ attitudes, attention, and comprehension. To achieve this aim, the research proposes a participatory co-design approach and employs a quasi-experimental study whereby university art and design students co-create animations with school teachers. It attempts to evaluate the influence of the approach on the students’ performance and to encourage teachers to explore its potential in their classrooms. It also explores how involving art and design students in the educational content creation process can provide stimulating learning experiences.
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PUERTO RICO PDC PLACE-COUNTERnarratives: Social Assemblages is done with the purpose of sentipensar (Escobar, 2014) and making processes visible from the Caribbean understanding how they are generated and developed, knowing the obstacles they face, finding common ground, and establishing ties of collaboration. The authors propose a poetic infrastructure (Larkin, 2013) between the Caribbean that allows exchange about space to strengthen our community of practitioners. COUNTERnarratives: Social Assemblages is a horizontal and collaborative discussion of knowledge production and dialogue. Our islands, although geographically close, are economically distant from each other due to the cost of travel and political factors. Our design community tends to look to the global North for peer communication, so our understanding of each other can be spotty, and various factors can disrupt engagement. A Counternarrative (Giroux, 1996) challenges the exclusionary processes of the status quo and proposes alternatives from a critical perspective that interconnects diverse experiences and knowledge. The COUNTERnarrative generated from the activity will be from Caribbean situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988). Given the historical situation, we are experiencing as islands (climate change and hurricanes, earthquakes, COVID-19, Fiscal Control Boards, assassination of President Jovenel Moise, etc.), it is imperative to reflect on who we are now and who we want to be in the future. How can we help each other among the Caribbean with the idea of emphasizing our roots and our identity through horizontal processes of participation? We need to respond and reflect on: What is our role? How can we emphasize and build on the union with the rest of the Caribbean? © 2022 Owner/Author.
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This article explores the idea that democratic technology development in public governance can be enhanced by adding an experiential dimension to it. Our work is situated in the context of an appathon organized by the Dutch government to initiate the development of a Covid-19 contact-tracing application. The appathon stimulated a multifaceted debate on technology design and societal values, and raised a crucial question: how can design methods enhance democratic technology development? To answer this question, we first identify three main democratic values (i.e., citizen participation, collective decision making, and critical engagement) that underpin three influential design methods: participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design. Next, based on design theory, we argue that these methods can bring three experiential qualities to democratic technology development: ownership, contestation, and imagination. We then situate this theoretical reflection in a reflexive thematic analysis of publicly available discussions that took place during the appathon. This makes it possible to identify opportunities to deploy participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design to engage citizens in political decision making directly and experientially. Based on our analysis, we highlight how abductive design reasoning may help iteratively deliberate sociotechnical challenges when using participatory design, adversarial design, and speculative-critical design. Ultimately, this paper explicates the role of design methods and practices in political participation.
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The paper reflects on how the identity and authenticity of art cities, with special regard to those that are considered as best practices in the field of heritage protection, can be undermined by processes of tourist gentrification stimulated by the global interest they exercise because of their recognized universal value. The neighborhood of San Lorenzo within the World Heritage Site of Florence (Italy) is presented as a case study of a historic community whose socio-economic fabric has deeply changed over the years due to increasing overtourism. The paper focuses on the action research “San Lorenzo Laboratory”, coordinated by the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, which aims to define, on a participatory basis, a shared strategy for the socially sustainable regeneration of the neighborhood, leveraging the redesign of public space and the reuse of an abandoned historical complex—the former monastery of Sant'Orsola. The results of the Laboratory, which took the form of requests and design concepts derived from discussions between experts, citizens, and stakeholders, have been delivered to the public institutions concerned and are intended to pave the way for a development and management model for the entire historic center, alternative to the tourist monoculture. The paper concludes by highlighting how the first effects of the initiative can be seen today in some policies and measures implemented by the City Council in response to the social and economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The last class session of the academic term represents an excellent opportunity to solicit meaningful feedback from students who have just completed the course. To capitalize on the students' first-hand knowledge of their own experiences with our course and maximize the impact of the last class for our Canadian graduate-level genetics course, we have used and optimized a workshop first described by Bleicher (2011) as a means of obtaining real-time, inperson course evaluations, and driving course evolution. Presented as an empowering opportunity for student activism, students are asked to contribute collaboratively to improving future iterations of the course. This approach stimulates thoughtful discussions, generates honest and useful feedback, and requires only nominal preparative work on the part of the instructor, whose primary role during the workshop is as a facilitator. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've assessed student perceptions of two virtual models for the Last Class Workshop-one using Google Docs, a free web-based word processor, and another using Miro, a collaborative whiteboard platform-to identify whether or not the Last Class Workshop can be effectively translated for a synchronous online learning environment. Student responses to the virtual workshops have been highly positive, and participants overwhelmingly preferred the Miro adaptation. We suggest that this is an effective way to access the expert knowledge of our students to develop innovative adaptations, updates, and evolutionary change at the end of a course, and conclude with a proposal for maintaining this virtual tool after in-person learning resumes.