Agile Development of self-monitoring and persuasive coaching technologies to support chronic heart failure patients and their caregivers

Design Symposium: Integrating Design Practices into eHealth and mHealth

Stephen Schueller, Northwestern University; Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen, University of Twente; Jelena Mirkovic, Oslo University Hospital; Eric Hekler, Arizona State University

The design of technologies has long been influenced by methodologies from user-centered design which engage stakeholders throughout the design process to ensure that technologies meet their needs and to design technologies along with those who will be impacted by their eventually deployment. Early efforts in eHealth and mHealth were often developed by those with expertise in clinical and behavioural sciences who lacked training and background in user-centered design and human-computer interaction. This symposium will focus on projects which aim to integrated design methodologies within mHealth and eHealth projects for behavior change. Presentations will highlight the use of these methodologies including agile development and participatory design and illustrate techniques of needs finding, ideation, prototype, and iterative development. Stephen Schueller will present on “Happiness Inventors” an 8-week workshop intended to teach kids design and positive psychological skills and to use participatory design methods to create ideas for technologies that could promote kid’s well-being. Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen will present on using agile development processes in the context of chronic care, heart failure, to support telemonitoring and personalized coaching. A platform was developed to collect data (daily measurements health, wellbeing) to facilitate personalized coaching using goal setting theory. Jelena Mirkovic will present on using participatory design methods to co-design technologies that can help chronic patients identify and mobilse personal strengths and resources in management of their daily lives. Eric Hekler will present on the development of training materials to help empower people to conduct self-experiments to investigate and improve their own health. Each presentation will last 15 minutes and the presentations will be followed with brief comments by Eric Hekler discussing the use of design methodologies for behaviour change technologies and questions from the audience moderator by the symposium chair, Stephen Schueller. This symposium is sponsored by ISRII’s Design Special Interest Group which aims to grow the knowledge and use of design methodologies within the ISRII community.