What makes a home? Designing home personas to represent the homes of families caring for children with medical complexity

Exploring the Importance and Performance Priorities of Older Adults With a User-Centred Approach to Create a Fall-Free Bathroom

BACKGROUND

Fall hazards in bathroom spaces constitute one of the most critical issues in the daily lives of older adults. Bathroom falls are somewhat different and constrained in nature than those in other parts of a home environment.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to adopt a user-centred approach to explore older adults' general bathroom needs, with a specific focus on showers and bathtubs as the designated activity area.

METHODS

The authors employed an extended importance-performance analysis (IPA) with a mixed-method research design. Three hundred and eleven older adults participated in a face-to-face IPA questionnaire for the quantitative phase of the study. The authors gathered the qualitative data through open-ended questions from 59 older adults.

RESULTS

The authors found positive correlation between older adults' attitudes towards an older-friendly bathroom and the potential for their bathrooms to be fall-free. The IPA calculations identify three key items with higher ratings in both importance and performance: The presence of appropriate artificial lighting, efficient mechanical ventilation and an accessible inside towel rail. Thematic analysis yields four themes: comfort, ease of access, error-proof design and emergency management.

CONCLUSIONS

The IPA calculations and thematic analysis confirm that older adults' rankings of importance and performance and their corresponding priority levels within the overarching themes indicate the need for these aspects to perform well and justify ongoing investments. The study concludes that addressing fall prevention requires not only designing specific solutions but also utilising appropriate technology in bathing and toileting activities.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Practitioners in geriatric and gerontological nursing, design, architecture and health care can use the importance and performance priority levels of older adults to guide the development and implementation of fall-free bathroom design. Policymakers can leverage the insights from this research to inform guidelines and regulations related to building codes, accessibility standards and healthcare policies.

Designing for caregiving networks: a case study of primary caregivers of children with medical complexity

OBJECTIVE

The study aimed to characterize the experiences of primary caregivers of children with medical complexity (CMC) in engaging with other members of the child's caregiving network, thereby informing the design of health information technology (IT) for the caregiving network. Caregiving networks include friends, family, community members, and other trusted individuals who provide resources, information, health, or childcare.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We performed a secondary analysis of two qualitative studies. Primary studies conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 50) with family caregivers of CMC. Interviews were held in the Midwest (n = 30) and the mid-Atlantic region (n = 20). Interviews were transcribed verbatim for thematic analysis. Emergent themes were mapped to implications for the design of future health IT.

RESULTS

Thematic analysis identified 8 themes characterizing a wide range of primary caregivers' experiences in constructing, managing, and ensuring high-quality care delivery across the caregiving network.

DISCUSSION

Findings evidence a critical need to create flexible and customizable tools designed to support hiring/training processes, coordinating daily care across the caregiving network, communicating changing needs and care updates across the caregiving network, and creating contingency plans for instances where caregivers are unavailable to provide care to the CMC. Informaticists should additionally design accessible platforms that allow primary caregivers to connect with and learn from other caregivers while minimizing exposure to sensitive or emotional content as indicated by the user.

CONCLUSION

This article contributes to the design of health IT for CMC caregiving networks by uncovering previously underrecognized needs and experiences of CMC primary caregivers and drawing direct connections to design implications.

Designing Personas for E-Resources Users in the University Libraries

Persona is a method to create a user profile by describing a fictitious user through user experience. This persona study needs to be carried out for the benefit of system design according to the users’ wishes because, so far, electronic resources (e-resources) are not widely used due to cognitive and affective factors such as limited subscription resources, limited user manuals, limited navigation features, and frequent errors when using electronic resources. This leaves the user feeling confused and stressed. The aim of this study is to obtain profiles of e-resource users in college libraries. The method used is an empathy map created with data from 32 users who answered questionnaires and participated in interviews. This study found four e-resource user personas in university libraries: lecturers, students, research assistants, and librarians. Users want a guide for using electronic resources that allows for chat and sharing, and which is fun and can be accessed from any device anytime and anywhere. The benefits of this study will be useful for designing e-resource systems according to users’ wishes.