The importance of gender-aware design in digital health wearables: A co-design study fostering sun protection behaviour in young men

Abstract

The rise in the number of people living with long-term conditions is precipitating a shift towards the development of wearable technologies that can monitor our health remotely. This shift makes it possible to rethink the healthcare structure towards awareness and proactive prevention instead of treatment through empowering users, e.g. patients for self-management of their health. In a sector towards individual specialization and relying on personal healthcare management, design has a key role in user participation and engagement. This paper reports a co-design study that empowered the participants as designers to design human-centred interventions that foster sun protection behaviour in young men. The findings from this study show the following: 1) sun protection concepts to enhance young men’s engagement in sun protection behaviour, 2) the integration of gender-aware design in digital health wearables contributes towards better user engagement in wearable technologies of the future.