Designing an eHealth Well-Being Program: A Participatory Design Approach

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• eHealth interventions are increasingly relevant for public health.
• A lack of sequential procedural frameworks for cocreating eHealth interventions exists.
• Participatory design (PD) offers a method for user-centered development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and describe a sequential PD process for cocreating an eHealth intervention.
• To inform the design of an eHealth intervention focused on enhancing well-being.
• To establish a replicable five-step PD process for health professionals and program planners.

Main Methods:

• Conducted four PD sessions with 57 participants.
• Participants engaged with prototypes, provided feedback, and co-designed intervention elements.
• A five-step PD process was identified: best practices collection, participatory discovery, initial proof-of-concept, participatory prototyping, and pilot intervention finalization.

Main Results:

• A novel five-step PD process for eHealth intervention development emerged.
• The process facilitated end-user cocreation and feedback on intervention design.
• A 5-week eHealth well-being intervention focusing on lifestyle, habits, physical activity, and meditation was proposed for online delivery.

Conclusions:

• The described five-step PD process provides a structured methodology for cocreating eHealth interventions.
• This approach can enhance the user-friendliness and effectiveness of digital health tools.
• Health professionals and behavior change practitioners can adopt this process to ensure end-user involvement.