Co-design in mHealth Systems Development: Insights From a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) systems hold great potential for supporting users in self-managing disease and engaging in a healthier life. However, given the mobile context and the multiple factors that affect a person’s health, designing mHealth systems involves much complexity and a range of pitfalls. To overcome these pitfalls, scholars have called on system designers to employ a co-design approach; that is, to involve stakeholders in all phases of the design process. However, the literature on how, when, and why designers use co-design in mHealth remains scant. To address this gap, we systematically reviewed 61 studies that co-designed mHealth systems. Our results show that co-designing mHealth systems constitutes a fragmented and rapidly evolving research field with only limited overlaps and a strong focus on the early design phases (i.e., pre-design, generative). Thereby, the co-designed artifacts cover various application contexts in disease management (e.g., heart disease, diabetes) and health promotion (e.g., physical activity, nutrition) and a diverse group of involved users, healthcare professionals, and system designers. Finally, guided by Sanders and Stappers’ (2014) co-design framework, we provide a concise overview of the most widely used methods in the different co-design phases.