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. 2021 May 30;7(1):32.
doi: 10.1186/s40900-021-00273-2.

Evaluating human-centred design for public health: a case study on developing a healthcare app with refugee communities

Rebeccah Bartlett  1 , Jacqueline A Boyle  2 , Jessica Simons Smith  3 , Nadia Khan  2 , Tracy Robinson  4 , Rohit Ramaswamy  3
Affiliations

Evaluating human-centred design for public health: a case study on developing a healthcare app with refugee communities

Rebeccah Bartlett et al. Res Involv Engagem. .

Abstract

Background: Australian women from migrant and refugee communities experience reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. Human-centred design can be a more ethical and effective approach to developing health solutions with underserved populations that are more likely to experience significant disadvantage or social marginalisation. This study aimed to evaluate how well Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit, applied human-centred design when developing a web-based application that delivers local, evidence-based and culturally relevant health information to its non-English speaking users.

Methods: This study undertook a document review, survey, and semi-structured interviews to evaluate how well Shifra was able to achieve its objectives using a human-centred design approach.

Results: A co-design process successfully led to the development of a web-based health app for refugee and migrant women. This evaluation also yielded several important recommendations for improving Shifra's human-centred design approach moving forward.

Conclusions: Improving refugees' access to sexual and reproductive health is complex and requires innovative and thoughtful problem solving. This evaluation of Shifra's human-centred design approach provides a helpful and rigorous guide in reporting that may encourage other organisations undertaking human-centred design work to evaluate their own implementation.

Keywords: Design thinking; Evaluation; Human-centred design; Refugee health.

Plain language summary

Australian women from non-English speaking migrant and refugee communities face reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and many then go on to experience poor health outcomes as a result. There is an urgent need for new approach to improve access to healthcare for underserved communities, one that centres these women in the process of finding, developing and disseminating the solutions themselves. Human-centred design can be a more ethical and effective methodology in working with communities to develop these health solutions.This study aimed to evaluate how well Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit focused on improving access to healthcare for refugees and new migrants, undertook human-centred design approach when developing a Smartphone app that delivers local, safe and culturally relevant health information to non-English speaking Australians. The authors interviewed refugees, health and social sector experts and computer programmers involved in creating Shifra to evaluate how well they used human-centred design to achieve its goals. This evaluation found that Shifra’s approach was successful whilst also highlighting several important recommendations for improving collaborative efforts with refugee communities. These findings could help other projects also seeking to undertake an authentic community co-design process.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: First author (RB) founded the Shifra app, however an external evaluator (JSS) was used to limit bias in evaluating Shifra’s HCD process otherwise no authors report competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Design Thinking Process Adaptation for Shifra
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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