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. 2023 Jun 15:10:e42382.
doi: 10.2196/42382.

A Transgender Health Information Resource: Participatory Design Study

Brad Morse #  1   2 , Andrey Soares  1 , Bethany M Kwan  2   3 , Marvyn Allen  4 , Rita S Lee  1 , Kristen Desanto  5 , Brooke Dorsey Holliman  2   6 , Kate Ytell  7 , Lisa M Schilling  1   2
Affiliations

A Transgender Health Information Resource: Participatory Design Study

Brad Morse et al. JMIR Hum Factors. .

Abstract

Background: Despite the abundance of health information on the internet for people who identify as transgender and gender diverse (TGD), much of the content used is found on social media channels, requiring individuals to vet the information for relevance and quality.

Objective: We developed a prototype transgender health information resource (TGHIR) delivered via a mobile app to provide credible health and wellness information for people who are TGD.

Methods: We partnered with the TGD community and used a participatory design approach that included focus groups and co-design sessions to identify users' needs and priorities. We used the Agile software development methodology to build the prototype. A medical librarian and physicians with expertise in transgender health curated a set of 97 information resources that constituted the foundational content of the prototype. To evaluate the prototype TGHIR app, we assessed the app with test users, using a single item from the System Usability Scale to assess feature usability, cognitive walk-throughs, and the user version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale to evaluate the app's objective and subjective quality.

Results: A total of 13 people who identified as TGD or TGD allies rated their satisfaction with 9 of 10 (90%) app features as good to excellent, and 1 (10%) of the features-the ability to filter to narrow TGHIR resources-was rated as okay. The overall quality score on the user version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale was 4.25 out of 5 after 4 weeks of use, indicating a good-quality mobile app. The information subscore received the highest rating, at 4.75 out of 5.

Conclusions: Community partnership and participatory design were effective in the development of the TGHIR app, resulting in an information resource app with satisfactory features and overall high-quality ratings. Test users felt that the TGHIR app would be helpful for people who are TGD and their care partners.

Keywords: LGBTQ; agile development; health information; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer; mobile app; mobile phone; participatory design; transgender.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the transgender health information resource (TGHIR) components.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conceptual framework for the design and development of the transgender health information resource.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Phases used to design and develop the transgender health information resource. CAB: Community Advisory Board; UI: user interface.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Sample feature value proposition statement from design session 1.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Bullseye prioritization exercise. Recreation of the 2 innermost rings from the original image to enhance readability. CC: closed captioning.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Midfidelity mock-up screens—(A) category cards and (B) resource cards—and final user interface—(C) resource cards. (A) is a mock-up screen with a list of category cards, (B) is a mock-up screen with a list of resource cards for a selected category, and (C) is the final prototype of the 2 types of resource cards—one to display information of a single resource within a category and one to display popular resources among the most viewed, liked, or bookmarked. TGHIR: transgender health information resource.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Screenshots of the main transgender health information resource (TGHIR) app features.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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