Integrating Human-Centered Design Methods Into a Health Promotion Project: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education Case Study for Intervention Design

Abstract

Background Human-centered design, or design thinking, offers an extensive toolkit of methods and strategies for user-centered engagement that lends itself well to intervention development and implementation. These methods can be applied to the fields of public health and medicine to design interventions that may be more feasible and viable in real-world contexts than those developed with different methods. Objective The design team aimed to develop approaches to building food skills among caregivers of children aged 0-5 years who are eligible for a federal food assistance program while they were in the grocery store. Methods They applied 3 specific human-centered design methods—Extremes and Mainstreams, Journey Mapping, and Co-Creation Sessions—to collaboratively develop intervention approaches to enhance Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) reach and impact across food retail settings. Extremes and Mainstreams is a specific kind of purposive sampling that selects individuals based on characteristics beyond demographics. Journey Mapping is a visual tool that asks individuals to identify key moments and decision points during an experience. Co-Creation Sessions are choreographed opportunities for individuals to explicitly contribute to the design of a solution alongside research or design team members. Results Ten caregivers with diverse lived experiences were selected to participate in remote design thinking workshops and create individual journey maps to depict their grocery store experiences. Common happy points and pain points were identified. Nine stakeholders, including caregivers, SNAP-Ed staff, and grocery store dieticians, cocreated 2 potential intervention approaches informed by caregivers’ experiences and needs: a rewards program and a meal box option. Conclusions These 3 human-centered design methods led to a meaningful co-design process where proposed interventions aligned with caregivers’ wants and needs. This case study provides other public health practitioners with specific examples of how to use these methods in program development and stakeholder engagement as well as lessons learned when adapting these methods to remote settings.

The Importance of Human-centered Design in Equitable Health Promotion Initiatives

“…There appears to be increasing interest in the use of HCD in health promotion. Chen, et al 13 describe their experience utilizing HCD methods to enhance development of food skills among caregivers of young children eligible for federal food assistance while in retail food settings. Caregivers, grocery store staff, and government program staff were successfully engaged in an HCD approach to co-create 2 potential interventions based on caregiver experiences and needs.…”

Disrupting the Practice: Antiracist Participatory Antidotes to Combat White Supremacy Manifestations in Community-Based Participatory Research

“…To disrupt these two WSC manifestations, we adhere to and encourage several disruption strategies. Firstly, we intentionally employ human-centered design methods to center participants with lived experiences throughout the intervention development process (Chen et al, 2023;FFORC Team, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c, 2021d. Human-centered design methods prioritize those most affected by the focal issue-in our case SNAP recipients-in intervention development.…”

“…Human-centered design methods prioritize those most affected by the focal issue-in our case SNAP recipients-in intervention development. We have previously employed human-centered design methods such as group brainstorming, dot voting and card sorting, and methods for engaged intervention development (Chen et al, 2023). We also utilize cocreation sessions, during which each participant is encouraged to provide feedback on how the proposed intervention should be modified to level the power dynamics between stakeholders.…”

How appropriateness and enjoyment of instructors' virtual backgrounds affect students' perceptions of learning

“…When instructors use video conferencing software for teaching, most guidance recommends use of a virtual background to obscure the environment around them for a number of reasons (Barchas, 2020;Ohnigian et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2023). First, the utilization of virtual backgrounds is an equalizer, placing everyone in the same virtual world rather than homes of varying levels of socio-economic status (SES; Chen et al, 2023). Second, virtual backgrounds help instructors maintain credibility by hiding messiness and external intrusion in their physical backgrounds (Barchas, 2020).…”

“…Yet, the existing literature is not enough to generate evidence-based best practices for online teaching. Despite the arguments for why using a virtual background is a best practice (Barchas, 2020;Ohnigian et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2023), there is still uncertainty about which backgrounds are the best choices for learning (c.f., Goethe et al, 2022;Kelly et al, 2023Kelly et al, , 2024. To address this gap, this study aims to advance the extant literature by examining the how perceived appropriateness and enjoyment of an instructor's virtual background affects learning.…”