Designing a Digital Tool to Support Healthy Lifestyle in Men With Prostate Cancer

Overview

The emil project aims to design, develop, implement and evaluate a digital service to support a healthy lifestyle among men with prostate cancer. In this second study, men with a history of prostate cancer are invited to participate in the scoping and design of a digital platform, through three iterations of workshops and individual interviews, which includes prototyping and other ideation processes. Finally, the men with a history of prostate cancer will be involved in the usability testing of the design, to ensure a platform fit for use by the intended users.

In this user-driven study, the methods will be workshops, interviews, usability testing and a concluding proof of concept testing. Workshops constitutes the bigger part of the user-driven design and ideation in this project. In workshops a group of people will generate a synergy that opens up for new ideas in a framed setting. The workshop format uses methods such as affinity diagrams; innovation jams; and ideation guided through artefacts such as Lego or paper cuts, with the researcher as the facilitator. After analysing the outcome of each design iteration, the findings will be incorporated into the design and focus the planning of the succeeding workshops in an iterative process. The usability of the design will be tested in between workshops in interviews. The test will be performed by think aloud testing with the current prototype, recording for data collection and researchers in the room to observe, facilitate and probe for reflection. For a more elaborate usability testing to conclude the design phase, a proof of concept will be performed. In this living lab scenario, the tool will be used at home by end-users in the intended way. Issues with technical functionality, user interphase, data management and workflow will surface and can be corrected during the proof of concept, thus consolidating the service before the feasibility study. Data collection from this part of the study will be by ongoing dialogue with participants, by e-mail and telephone. To provide the broadest possible foundation for recruitment in terms of diversity in lifestyle and socioeconomic status, invitation to the study is done by mail directly to a randomly chosen group of men with prostate cancer. All iterations will be based on the results of the previous. The first iteration is based on the ethnographic input from the first study. All participants in study 2 will be met with a baseline questionnaire to evaluate digital readiness and e-health literacy and adjust participant configuration to ensure diversity. The questionnaire include self-reported educational level, health issues, treatments, diet, physical activity level and other lifestyle factors as well as eHLQ as part of the READHY questionnaire toolkit. The 13 dimensions of READHY comes from heiQ, HLQ and eHLQ, and work as a multidimensional validated robust psychometric instrument evaluation and can be used in combination to describe user's health technology readiness level and degree of enablement. Each activity of the user-driven design process will be documented in a report, that will serve as the data foundation for a scientific publication.