Design for social reinforcement in health IT services

Abstract

Social reinforcement is one of the core methods of naturally maintaining people’s health-promoting behaviors in the real world context. It has shown an increased potential for use in various health IT services with the advancement of social networking technology that connects various mediators who are social members and allows them to deliver social reinforcement to users. By examining users’ experiences with the current health IT services and exploring their needs related to using health IT services, this Ph.D. dissertation suggests how to take advantage of social reinforcement by designing a health IT service. In designing a health IT service, it is important to orchestrate various touch-points and social interactions among multiple stakeholders, particularly as users’ experiences of the service changes over time. Understanding the diverse social channels in a health IT service ecosystem and how mediators who are connected to the social channels influence users differently allow their changes in health-related behaviors to be revealed. Also, in order to select the right mediators who can influence the behavior of health IT service users, it is important to examine how certain qualities of current health IT service mediators differ with regard to the social reinforcement-related experience, as well as attributes of potential mediators who are not yet connected but wish to be. Those constructs of social reinforcement in health IT services changes over time according to the temporal phases of user journey in using the service. Thus, based on the dynamic changes of social channels and mediators’ roles in social reinforcement, a design principle―namely, that of social reinforcement in health IT services―is described how a health IT service should be designed according to the user journey. After that, the design toolkit is systematically designed as the delivering form of the design principle of social reinforcement in health IT services. By doing so, the utilization of design principle can be increased. While designers suggest diverse new health IT services using the design toolkit, they evaluate the design toolkit as well as the design principle, and these results are reflected the toolkit design to be revised iteratively. This Ph.D. dissertation will include several contributions. First, by understanding users’ experiences with health IT services, the dissertation suggests that the process of social reinforcement is an appropriate basis for a health IT service. Second, a body of knowledge is developed as the design principle of social reinforcement in a health IT service is explored. Third, the dissertation demonstrates appropriate uses of the design principle by introducing the design toolkit of social reinforcement in health IT services. This contributes to linking the practical design field and the empirical findings from design research. Fourth, the design principle and design toolkit are validated by designers’ evaluations.