research-article

Turning tables: a structured focus group method to remediate unequal power during participatory design in health care

Authors:

Thijs W Swinnen,

René Westhovens,

Maarten Van Mechelen,

Vero Vanden AbeeleAuthors Info & Claims

PDC '18: Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial - Volume 2

Article No.: 4, Pages 1 - 5

https://doi.org/10.1145/3210604.3210649

Published: 20 August 2018 Publication History

Abstract

In a participatory design process, patients as well as care providers play a critical role in the design and development of healthcare apps. However, special attention should be given to problematic group dynamics that may arise from unequal power across participants. In this paper, we present Turning Tables, a focus group method, inspired by social interdependence theory (SIT), to mitigate asymmetric power. First, we present our SIT-inspired protocol for conducting focus groups. Next, via a qualitative analysis of 2 focus groups, we describe group dynamics and evaluate our method. Observations show that by splitting teams into patients versus care providers, and by specifying turn-taking (giving the floor to patients first), unequal power can be mitigated. However, observations also show that participants default back into their traditional roles during less formalized moments.

References

[1]

Berg, M. 1999. Patient care information systems and health care work: a sociotechnical approach. International journal of medical informatics. 55, 2 (1999), 87--101.

[2]

Boulos, M.N.K. et al. 2014. Mobile medical and health apps: state of the art, concerns, regulatory control and certification. Online Journal of Public Health Informatics. 5, 3 (Feb. 2014), 229.

[3]

Bratteteig, T. and Wagner, I. 2014. Disentangling Participation Power and Decision-making in Participatory Design. Springer International Publishing.

Digital Library

[4]

Cánovas, L. et al. 2017. Impact of Empathy in the Patient-Doctor Relationship on Chronic Pain Relief and Quality of Life: A Prospective Study in Spanish Pain Clinics. Pain Medicine (Malden, Mass.). (Jul. 2017).

[5]

Design Kit: http://www.designkit.org/methods/28. Accessed: 2018-02-06.

[6]

Dodero, G. et al. 2014. Towards tangible gamified co-design at school: two studies in primary schools. (2014), 77--86.

Digital Library

[7]

Downloads on Google Play - AppBrain: https://www.appbrain.com/stats/android-app-downloads. Accessed: 2018-02-06.

[8]

Flanders DC - GPS-brainstormkit: https://www.flandersdc.be/en/tools/gps. Accessed: 2017-07-27.

[9]

Goodyear-Smith, F. and Buetow, S. 2001. Power issues in the doctor-patient relationship. Health care analysis: HCA: journal of health philosophy and policy. 9, 4 (2001), 449--462.

[10]

Goold, S.D. and Lipkin, M. 1999. The Doctor-Patient Relationship. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 14, Suppl 1 (Jan. 1999), S26--S33.

[11]

Greenhalgh, T. et al. 2010. Adoption, non-adoption, and abandonment of a personal electronic health record: case study of HealthSpace. BMJ. 341, (Nov. 2010), c5814.

[12]

Grönvall, E. et al. 2015. Concordance: A Critical Participatory Alternative in Healthcare IT. Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing. 1, 1 (Oct. 2015), 4.

Digital Library

[13]

Grönvall, E. and Kyng, M. 2013. On participatory design of home-based healthcare. Cognition, Technology & Work. 15, 4 (Nov. 2013), 389--401.

Digital Library

[14]

Health 2012. Doctor-patient dynamics: About that other brain in the exam room .... National Post.

[15]

Health Insurance Companies and mHealth Apps: https://innovatemedtec.com/content/health-insurance-companies-and-mhealth-apps. Accessed: 2017-07-31.

[16]

Hillestad, R. et al. 2005. Can Electronic Medical Record Systems Transform Health Care? Potential Health Benefits, Savings, And Costs. Health Affairs. 24, 5 (Sep. 2005), 1103--1117.

[17]

Iversen, O.S. et al. 2010. Rekindling Values in Participatory Design. Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference (New York, NY, USA, 2010), 91--100.

Digital Library

[18]

Iversen, O.S. and Smith, R.C. 2012. Scandinavian participatory design: dialogic curation with teenagers. (2012), 106.

Digital Library

[19]

Kaba, R. and Sooriakumaran, P. 2007. The evolution of the doctor-patient relationship. International Journal of Surgery. 5, 1 (Feb. 2007), 57--65.

[20]

Kerse, N. et al. 2004. Physician-Patient Relationship and Medication Compliance: A Primary Care Investigation. Annals of Family Medicine. 2, 5 (Sep. 2004), 455--461.

[21]

Luxton, D.D. et al. 2012. mHealth Data Security: The Need for HIPAA-Compliant Standardization. Telemedicine and e-Health. 18, 4 (Mar. 2012), 284--288.

[22]

Managing the Power Dynamic Between Doctors and Patients: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2014/05/13/managing-the-power-dynamic-between-doctors-and-patients. Accessed: 2017-07-31.

[23]

McCurdie, T. et al. 2012. mHealth Consumer Apps: The Case for User-Centered Design. Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology. 46, s2 (Jan. 2012), 49--56.

[24]

Nimmon, L. and Stenfors-Hayes, T. 2016. The "Handling" of power in the physician-patient encounter: perceptions from experienced physicians. BMC Medical Education. 16, (Apr. 2016).

[25]

Revenäs, Å. et al. 2015. A Mobile Internet Service for Self-Management of Physical Activity in People With Rheumatoid Arthritis: Challenges in Advancing the Co-Design Process During the Requirements Specification Phase. JMIR Research Protocols. 4, 3 (Sep. 2015), e111.

[26]

Rothmann, M.J. et al. 2016. Participatory design in health care: participation, power and knowledge. (2016), 127--128.

Digital Library

[27]

Schnall, R. et al. 2015. mHealth Technology as a Persuasive Tool for Treatment, Care and Management of Persons Living with HIV. AIDS and Behavior. 19, 2 (Jan. 2015), 81--89.

[28]

Schuler, D. and Namioka, A. 1993. Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. CRC Press.

Digital Library

[29]

Stoyanov, S.R. et al. 2015. Mobile App Rating Scale: A New Tool for Assessing the Quality of Health Mobile Apps. JMIR mHealth and uHealth. 3, 1 (Mar. 2015).

[30]

Vaajakallio, K. et al. 2010. Lifelong interactions: "It became Elvis": co-design lessons with children. interactions. 17, 4 (Jul. 2010), 26.

Digital Library

[31]

Van Mechelen, M. et al. 2015. Challenging Group Dynamics in Participatory Design with Children: Lessons from Social Interdependence Theory. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (New York, NY, USA, 2015), 219--228.

Digital Library

[32]

van Velsen, L. et al. 2013. Why mobile health app overload drives us crazy, and how to restore the sanity. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 13, (Feb. 2013), 23.

[33]

Wang, S.J. et al. 2003. A cost-benefit analysis of electronic medical records in primary care. The American Journal of Medicine. 114, 5 (Apr. 2003), 397--403.

[34]

WHO | The bigger picture for e-health: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/90/5/12-040512/en/. Accessed: 2017-07-31.

Cited By

Gautam ATatar DMatheis CKannabiran G(2024)Surfacing Conflicts in Participatory Design: Methodological ConsiderationsProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669891(194-197)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661455.3669891
Akinluyi EGreenough AIson KClarkson P(2023)Applying a participatory systems and value approach in a transdisciplinary exercise: on assessing the impact of training and education initiativesHealth Systems10.1080/20476965.2023.223063212:4(446-460)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/20476965.2023.2230632
Schuster RBrewis AWutich ASafi CVanrespaille TBowen GSturtzSreetharan CMcDaniel AOchandarena P(2023)Individual interviews versus focus groups for evaluations of international development programs: Systematic testing of method performance to elicit sensitive information in a justice study in HaitiEvaluation and Program Planning10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2022.10220897(102208)Online publication date: Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2022.102208
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Turning to Peers: Integrating Understanding of the Self, the Condition, and Others' Experiences in Making Sense of Complex Chronic Conditions

People are increasingly involved in the self-management of their own health, including chronic conditions. With technology advances, the choice of self-management practices, tools, and technologies has never been greater. The studies reported here ...
Turning Points And Relaxation Oscillation Cycles in Simple Epidemic Models

We study the interplay between effects of disease burden on the host population and the effects of population growth on the disease incidence, in an epidemic model of SIR type with demography and disease-caused death. We revisit the classical problem of ...
The Use of Interactive Tables in Promoting Wellbeing in Specific User Groups
Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Social Media, Games and Assistive Environments
Abstract
Dementia is estimated to affect 50 million people worldwide [1]. A significant proportion of residents in residential homes are people with moderate to severe dementia [2, 3]. Apathy amongst them is a major issue [3–5]. Tovertafel is an ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

PDC '18: Proceedings of the 15th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial - Volume 2

August 2018

230 pages

ISBN:9781450355742

DOI:10.1145/3210604

Editors:
Liesbeth Huybrechts
Hasselt University, Belgium
,
Maurizio Teli
Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Portugal
,
Ann Light
University of Sussex, United Kingdom
,
Yanki Lee
Enable Foundation, Hong Kong China/Linnaeus University, Sweden
,
Carl Di Salvo
Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
,
Erik Grönvall
IT Univeristy of Copenhagen, Denmark
,
Anne Marie Kanstrup
Aalborg University, Denmark
,
Keld Bødker
Roskilde Uniuversity, Denmark

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 August 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

PDC '18

PDC '18: Participatory Design Conference 2018

August 20 - 24, 2018

Hasselt and Genk, Belgium

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 49 of 289 submissions, 17%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

10
Total Citations
View Citations
324
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)82
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)7

Reflects downloads up to 26 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Gautam ATatar DMatheis CKannabiran G(2024)Surfacing Conflicts in Participatory Design: Methodological ConsiderationsProceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 210.1145/3661455.3669891(194-197)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661455.3669891
Akinluyi EGreenough AIson KClarkson P(2023)Applying a participatory systems and value approach in a transdisciplinary exercise: on assessing the impact of training and education initiativesHealth Systems10.1080/20476965.2023.223063212:4(446-460)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/20476965.2023.2230632
Schuster RBrewis AWutich ASafi CVanrespaille TBowen GSturtzSreetharan CMcDaniel AOchandarena P(2023)Individual interviews versus focus groups for evaluations of international development programs: Systematic testing of method performance to elicit sensitive information in a justice study in HaitiEvaluation and Program Planning10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2022.10220897(102208)Online publication date: Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2022.102208
Çarçani KBratteteig THolone HHerstad J(2023)EquiP: A Method to Co-Design for CooperationComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)10.1007/s10606-023-09463-w32:3(385-438)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-023-09463-w
Haque MRubya S(2022)"For an App Supposed to Make Its Users Feel Better, It Sure is a Joke" - An Analysis of User Reviews of Mobile Mental Health ApplicationsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551466:CSCW2(1-29)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555146
Alfrink KKeller IKortuem GDoorn N(2022)Contestable AI by Design: Towards a FrameworkMinds and Machines10.1007/s11023-022-09611-z33:4(613-639)Online publication date: 13-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-022-09611-z
Krüger MWeibert Ade Castro Leal DRandall DWulf V(2021)"What is the Topic of the Group, Please?" On Migration, Care and the Challenges of Participation in DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34760505:CSCW2(1-29)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3476050
Kariotis TJ. Mir D(2020)Fighting Back AlgocracyProceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020 - Participation(s) Otherwise - Volume 210.1145/3384772.3385151(148-153)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3384772.3385151
Geuens JSwinnen TGeurts LWesthovens RDe Croon RVanden Abeele V(2020)Worriers versus Warriors: Tailoring mHealth to Address Differences in Patients with Chronic Arthritis2020 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI)10.1109/ICHI48887.2020.9374322(1-12)Online publication date: Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICHI48887.2020.9374322
Geuens JGeurts LSwinnen TWesthovens RVanden Abeele V(2019)Mobile Health Features Supporting Self-Management Behavior in Patients With Chronic Arthritis: Mixed-Methods Approach on Patient PreferencesJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/125357:3(e12535)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2019
https://doi.org/10.2196/12535

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents