They don't always think about that: Translational needs in the design of personal health informatics applications

Abstract

Personal health informatics continues to grow in both research and practice, revealing many challenges of designing applications that address people's needs in their health, everyday lives, and collaborations with clinicians. Research suggests strategies to ad-dress such challenges, but has struggled to translate these strategies into design practice. This study examines translation of insights from personal health informatics research into resources to sup-port designers. Informed by a review of relevant literature, we present our development of a prototype set of design cards in-tended to support designers in re-thinking potential assumptions about personal health informatics. We examined our design cards in semi-structured interviews, frst with 12 student designers and then with 12 health-focused professional designers and researchers. Our results and discussion reveal tensions and barriers designers encounter, the potential for translational resources to inform the design of health-related technologies, and a need to support design-ers in addressing challenges of knowledge, advocacy, and evidence in designing for health.