Comparative study of 4 exploratory human-centred design tools when deployed in participatory health service settings

Abstract

The shift from traditional models of public service design to public-driven ones has been slow in the health service and particularly in the General Practice Consultation in the UK. This hesitation about fully adapting these design methods has been found to be motivated by a lack of evidence regarding the successful implementations of public involvement activities and the use of its tools, partial coverage of these tools, and failures to report on the use of alternative tools, among other reasons. This research therefore aimed to propose Human-Centred Design (HCD) as an underlying philosophy and a pragmatic set of methodologies to better understand the challenges related to the application of customer involvement activities and the use typical methods when deployed in the investigation of issues and opportunities for the design of healthcare settings. This research consisted of three stages. An exploration stage, in which it was identified and confirmed several research gaps as well as a specific case for study with a degree of complexity and known for supporting customer involvement approaches. These activities involved a literature review about customer involvement processes and a qualitative interview study (with 30 participants) in which it was identified that, a suitable case for study to perform a large ethnographic investigation using representative Human-Centred Design tools could be ‘Communication and relationship between GPs and patients’. A development stage, in which it was investigated the design of public involvement activities as well as the identification and selection process of some ideal HCD tools (Focus Groups, Future Workshops / Rich Pictures. Love & Break-up Letters, and Crowdsourcing) to work with the selected case. For these activities, a total of 72 participants were recruited (n=18 per activity). Lastly, an evaluation and proposal phase, analysed these tools through a comparative study to identify several of their strengths and weakness in order to identify the best tool or combination of tools. The outcome from this comparison suggested that among the tools used for this research there was not a most optimal option or combination of options and that the success of an involvement activity relies in the careful and thorough preparation of such processes. This research concludes, that the most optimal form of helping health researchers to undertake public involvement research and to better understand the process of identifying and selecting ideal engagement tools, could be by providing a best practice informative guide containing a simplified and comprehensive version of the most commonly found steps embedded in this kind of design practices.