Study

We responded to the call to help with COVID-related vaccination software, especially for vulnerable and at-risk people, such as those who live with chronic conditions. What also differentiated our system was its technical integration with Electronic Health Records (EHR).

As the researchers on a Canada-wide project funded by the Supercluster, MITACS, and the Digital Health Circle, we collaborated with health tech companies Cambian, IBM, LifeLabs, TickIt, Well Health, and the non-profit Providence Health Care.
Our job as researchers was twofold:

1. to identify the real needs of people identified as “vulnerable and at-risk” &
2. to ensure the system was as inclusive and usable as possible.

We built on our technical and design expertise in designing, building and testing health tech for people who live with long-term, chronic conditions, their caregivers and their healthcare professionals.

Our patient-centred approaches and our interests in inclusive, individualized healthcare enabled us to uncover many of the specialized contexts and needs that would have otherwise remained invisible. 

To interact with as many people as possible, we first contacted numerous non-profit organizations, interviewed their organizers and staff, and focused on in-depth interviews, usability studies and discussions with their many members.

Next, we conducted usability studies to make sure the vaccination scheduling system would be usable by those who are aging, immuno-compromised, differently abled, living in remote areas, living with chronic conditions, or who could only access the online system via mobile phones.

Clockwise: Dr. Diane Gromala, PhD students Bahiravi Warke, Xin Tong and MSc student Amal Vincent worked with people who are considered “vulnerable and at-risk” to severe illness from COVID-19 as identified by Canada’s and BC’s Ministry of Health. This included seniors, those who have cancer, are immuno-compromised, or have chronic conditions such as insulin-dependent diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney conditions, blood and rare diseases, significant developmental disabilities or require respiratory support.

Our discoveries:

• • the crucial and diverse roles of diverse caregivers (a family member, friend or neighbor);
  • the roles and centrality of extended families, especially among many people new to Canada;
  • important gender, cultural and linguistic differences; and
  • that ease-of-use is essential, not a mere luxury.

An unexpected outcome was developing a just-in-time, rapid response method to communicate the results of our research in an accelerated but scientifically trustworthy way.

Project focus and findings:

UXUI:
Needs Analyses
Usability Studies
Patient-centred Design
Inclusive Design

An innovative Citizen Science workshop led to a study ‘in the wild,’  an academic-industry initiative, and a province-wide initiative about ‘the burden of pain symptoms’ — a first.

Academic researchers—from the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada (ARC) and Simon Fraser University’s (SFU’s) Pain Studies Lab and BioV Lab—partnered with award-winning industry partner Tactica Interactive to develop a web portal for all citizens of British Columbia (BC). In November 2019, SFU researchers then subjected it to testing ‘in the wild’ of a result of a collaborative effort between ARC and SFU’s Pain Studies and BioV Labs that started with an innovative ‘design thinking’ workshop last April.

Objective: In the web portal, the research teams will ask all citizens of BC about how ‘the burden of pain symptoms’ might affect their lives, from their ability to sleep and function at work and in ‘ordinary, everyday life,’ to their quality of life.

(Photos courtesy: D.Gromala, 2019)

Bhairavi Warke and Ankit Gupta, PhD students and researchers from the Pain Studies & BioV Labs at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT) at SFU led the mall study. Researchers: Sherry Wang, Gary Li, Pegah Kaiei, Celia Zhang, Dr. Diane Gromala & Dr. Chris Shaw.

After months of working closely with Tactica Interactive on designing the web portal, the research teams did what tech professionals are taught to do: to test it with some of the people it was designed for — citizens. Such testing is an ideal. However, in industry, ‘user testing’ can be difficult because of its cost or time it requires, or both.

University researchers usually manage to conduct such studies, but more often than not, they’re conducted in a laboratory because labs offer tightly controlled conditions. Studies done ‘in the wild’ — outside of research labs — aren’t as tightly controlled, but they can reach a larger cross section of future ‘users.’ Because the web portal is meant for all citizens of BC, the researchers insisted on testing the web portal in a mall in Surrey.

Results: The web portal’s usability, acceptability, appropriateness, legibility and readability were tested by people in the mall who were generous enough to spend time using the website and answering researchers’ questions. The results were transcribed, analyzed and communicated to the web portal’s designers and to the research teams.

Stay tuned: The web portal is now scheduled to launch in May 2020.