Designing for healthier citizens (Hospital Hero and Healthy Eating/Parenting)

Speakers meeting link: https://bit.ly/36uVRwF | Meeting attendants: Facebook live at https://www.facebook.com/designscapesproject/

15:00-15:15 Welcome and introduction
(Ingrid Mulder, TU Delft)
15:15-15:45 Introduction of the pilot projects Hospital Hero (Charlotte Poot) and Healthy Eating/Parenting
(Annet Bruil, Heartbeat Ventures)
15:45-17:00 Interactive debate
17:00 End

Our speakers

Ingrid Mulder, PhD is an expert in transformative and social design. Her background in policy and organization sciences (MA, University of Tilburg) and behavior science (Ph.D., University of Twente) together with an early-stage research career anticipating future technologies impacting society within the national Top Technology Institute on Telematics has reinforced her ongoing transdisciplinary research addressing complex societal challenges at a systemic level. She has been (co-)principal investigator in a dozen of national and European projects, that share their focus on design methodology in relation to digital, social or urban innovation and established among others the European Network of Living Labs and the Designscapes capacity building program. Currently, as an Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology and director of the Delft Design Lab Participatory City Making, she further builds design capacity in the public realm through local design experiments and developing methods and strategies for social sustainability and systemic change.

As a PhD student in Public Health, affiliated to the National eHealth Living Lab, Charlotte Poot likes to explore the potentials of digital health solution to support people in self managing their disease and becoming healthier and happier citizens. Being involved in multiple multidisciplinary health projects involving healthcare providers, UX/UI designers and researchers Charlotte has become acquainted with user-centered design research and has learned to speak the language of both. With this somewhat unique profile she has facilitated multiple design health-related design projects and has acted as the figurative bridge between design and medical sciences.

As a lead practitioner at Heartbeat Ventures, Annet Bruil helps to co-create a healthier world. A healthier world to her means a world in which everyone, no matter their socio-economic status or background, can live healthy, happy and sustainable lives in balance with our social and physical environments.
Both analytic and hands-on, she uses her creative intelligence to inspire human-centred solutions that work for all involved. She makes complexity tangible and knows how to bring stakeholders and different perspectives together to affect social impact. Behaviour and the connection between people’s contexts inspire her and behaviour design has been a red thread in her career.

The session is organised with the aim to give examples of and further discuss the value of design approaches in tackling and improving current health outcomes.

To do so, we invited innovators from two of the selected initiatives in the 2nd Open Call of DESIGNSCAPES for Prototypes: Charlotte Poot, from the project Hospital Hero, and Annet Bruil, from the project Healthy Parenting.

Charlotte and Annet will introduce their initiatives illustrating how they tackled the challenge of a healthier society from different perspectives. Afterwards, an open debate will be held with a panel of expert guests differently engaged in the Dutch health domain

With our guests, as well as the audience attending the session, we will discuss the value that design brings in innovating the current health outcomes and how this could be further sustained to achieve even larger-scale changes towards healthier societies.

The Hospital hero app is an ehealth solution that uses gamification and augmented reality to make a hospital visit for chronically ill children more predictable, pleasant and less stressful. The Hospital hero app does so by connecting the safe home environment to the hospital environment, preparing children and providing distraction. The HH app was developed in two phases: During the first phase, a co-creation session with former patients, nurses, medical experts, designers, researchers, app developers and representatives of Delft University of Technology, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, National Ehealth Living Lab (NELL) was held. This led to a patient journey map, design opportunities and an offline version which was tested among patients and parents at the outpatient hospital unit. With the offline version, the assumptions and essence of the Hospital Hero app were tested. Gathered insights and user feedback were translated in phase 2 into design recommendations and led, through several iterations, into the development of a Minimum Viable Prototype (MVP).

Due to circumstances with the Covid19 virus, we were unable to test the online version in the hospital. A test environment was simulated at the app builder’s office. Children of different ages tested the online version and showed that the app fits the interests and needs of the children. Being challenged, well informed, being informed, entertained and distracted were key features. Therefore, the HH app has the clear potential to make the hospital visit more pleasant and less stressful for children.

A first MVP of the HH app, financially supported by DESIGNSCAPES, focuses on blood test procedures in secondary care. However, the HH app can easily be tailored and upscaled to other hospital procedures and/or other health contexts, such as primary care.

Healthy Parenting Rotterdam responds to the growing health gap in Rotterdam. Lifestyle diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, have a higher prevalence in people with a low Socio Economic Status (SES). The Healthy Parenting intervention aims to prevent overweight and obesity in young children by influencing parenting practices around meal time, thereby influencing the child’s eating behavior.

A feasibility study, done in 2019, showed the prospect of using a tangible and visual tool in order to convey practical parenting support as opposed to textual solutions focusing on information transfer. It also showed a gap in the current support system of parents in Rotterdam. When kids are between the age of 1 and 3 years old, especially for parents with lower SES background, little is done to help establish healthy eating patterns. Furthermore, it was highlighted that influencing parenting practices matching with the authoritative parenting style is an opportunity for preventative tools.

During the prototype phase, with support of the DesignScapes Design-Enabled Innovation in Urban Environments” H2020-SC6-CO-CREATION-2016-3 fund, the concept design was conceptualized and a first low-fidelity prototype served to open up co-creation with both the target group as well as with public health and behavior experts. In order to learn from mothers how they would respond to the concept we created diverse co-creation tools that allowed them to articulate their vision and prototype their own tool. We talked to them about their perspective on healthy eating, their family habits, wishes and needs but also about design details; e.g. tone of voice, images and content. 10 co-creation sessions were conducted in which we co-created with 21 mothers and 3 experts. An additional 24 low-fidelity prototypes were created. Using the lessons learned, we iterated the design of the tool, naming it the SUPER Eater gift set.

The SUPER eater gift set re-frames parenting advice to gift- receiving. Parents feel valued and appreciated. The gift enables them to make mealtime easier through practical and visual tools. SUPER eater messages are shown on the tools, promoting healthy parenting practices and nudging towards healthier dinners. Children are exposed to the concept of a healthy meal through visual representation of a healthy meal on the plate. The tool is to be given as a gift to parents of children turning 1 year old. This moment marks the start of their child joining the family meals.

The SUPER Eater gift set was conceptualized and 35 high fidelity prototypes were produced. A test (with qualitative and quantitative elements) was set up to learn about the use, experience and possible impact of the tool on parenting practices. The test has shown a positive response towards the SUPER Eater gift set. Changes in behavior could also be noted for individuals, however, due to the small number of participants in the test, none of the findings is statistically significant. Next steps will be to create a value model together with project partners in order to make the tool financially feasible.