For my Master's thesis, I conducted a study to understand how researchers from Human-Centered Design and Health work together as well as what challenges surface during those collaborations

Sharmaine Poblete - Lead Researcher

Elena Agapie - Advisor

Donald Bren School of Information and Computer ScienceUniversity of California, Irvine

I conducted a study to identify points of improvements for the FAFSA4caster user interface.

How do Health researchers perceive design and design methods?

What challenges do Health researchers face when implementing design methods and approaches in their work?

What challenges do Health researchers face when collaborating alongside Human-Centered Design researchers to develop health technologies?

To understand Health researchers’ perspectives on human-centered design and using design methods in their research, I conducted semi-structured interviews with Health researchers who self-identified as having used human centered design approaches (user centered, participatory design, etc.) or worked alongside a design collaborator in health technology projects. After completing the interviews, I used deductive and thematic analysis to analyze the interview data.

We interviewed health researchers that fulfilled the following qualifications: 1) over the age of 18; 2) currently working or living in the US; and 3) were involved in technology projects that involved both health and technology or design researchers.

We recruited participants by reaching out to eligible researchers from CHI conference proceedings from the last 3 years (2019-2021), who had previously published a health related paper involving human-centered design methods. In addition, we recruited through email addresses available on public domains (e.g. university directories and online CVs) with information about the objective of the study and what participation in the study entails. We were also able to recruit additional participants through snowball sampling as well as through personal connections. Participants were able to self-evaluate their eligibility through a pre-interview survey that was distributed in the initial invitation email. We were particularly focused on United States-based researchers because of its unique university and healthcare infrastructure, which entails its own challenges from those of other countries.

This thesis presents empirical data about how Health researchers perceive design as well as what challenges they face when using design methods and working alongside design collaborators. In addition, I provide recommendations for how However, I acknowledge that there are limitations to this study as well as opportunities for improvement in future work.

Because the target population included Health researchers and clinicians, it was difficult to recruit many potential participants due to their busy schedules in clinics and hospitals as well as other competing timelines. Recruitment was also limited to Health researchers who worked at research-focused (R1 universities with a medical school; one without) within the United States as well as who self-identified whether or not they used or were familiar with doing design work. Thus, this caused the data to cover a small subset of the larger target population. In addition, there were five participants that had been a part of training programs and/or career awards, which caused the data to reflect more of these unique experiences and was not fully representative of my target populations’ experiences outside of these training programs and/or career awards. The findings in this thesis are also not representative of Health researchers outside of the United States, those who worked at non-research focused institutions, as well as those who may be implementing design methods in their work but do not identify as doing design work.

In terms of future work, it is important to gain insight on these missed perspectives in order to fully understand the challenges that Health researchers face when incorporating design into their work as well as confirm what themes appear in the data. In addition, because this study focuses on the Health researchers’ perspectives, I hope to combine and compare these findings with the perspectives of HCD researchers in order to gain a full understanding of these multidisciplinary collaborations.