Dementia Caregivers Driving Smart Technology Design: User Centered Design of the Health App Review Tool Dedicated Interface

Research Objectives: To develop a dedicated web and app based portal for the Health App Review Tool (HART), a smart decision making aid designed to connect the Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia’s (ADRD) population to health apps that address their specific condition-specific needs and account for their accessibility, contextual, and digital literacy preferences.

Design: This research and design project utilized co-design and qualitative analysis methodology.

Setting: All data collection activity was carried out via Teams video conferencing software. All advisory group members (end-users) participated from their individual home settings.

Participants: ADRD caregivers were recruited through a University of Pittsburgh caregiver registry.

Interventions: Advisory group members engaged in 6 co-design sessions. Co-design sessions encompassed iterative cycles of “ideation→design→evaluation”. The initial session focused on “ideation→design” of the HART interface, guiding the content and layout of the HART portal. Subsequent sessions progressed through multiple cycles of “evaluation →ideation→design,”. The final session focused on “evaluating” the HART portal and assessment designs prior to “implementation” of the design by a web developer.

Main Outcome Measures: All co-design sessions were recorded and transcribed via Teams. All transcript were corrected for discrepancies from audio recordings. Next, transcript were analyzed for themes to gather better understanding in design preferences and priorities among advisory group members. This insight is useful to the refinement of the HART ecosystem (portal, profile development page, and assessment) and informative for complementary smart technology development projects targeting ADRD caregiver populations.

Results: A total N=5 advisory group members participated in the Health App Review Tool Co-design sessions. All advisory group members were Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) caregivers, actively providing care for a spouse (N=4) or parent (N=1) with ADRD. Themes that emerged from advisory group feedback included "Validation of Language", "End-User consideration", and "Further development". These themes were supported by 69 codes across the 6 co-design sessions. Feedback is being used to refine the HART Portal.

Conclusions: This design and design project works to further refine the HART assessment into a human centered and usable tool that can be transitioned outside of the research spaced and utilized in real world clinical settings. Working directly with ADRD caregivers is key to developing a person-centered tool, capable of providing human-to-technology matching capabilities. Ultimately, this project is anticipated to support the ADRD community in identifying and adopting health apps that will address individualized needs in the community setting.

Author(s) Disclosures: National Institute On Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P30AG073105.