Workshop length: Half-day

Presenters:

Andrew Berry, PhD; Assistant Professor, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Elena Agapie, PhD; Assistant Professor, University of California-Irvine

Carolyn Foster, MD, MS; Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

Description

The purpose of the workshop is to provide hands-on experience and expert coaching in planning and communicating human-centered design (HCD) methods for research proposals. In the first, didactic portion of the workshop, participants will learn frameworks and methods associated with key phases of the HCD process: conducting user research to understand the sociotechnical context of an intervention, translating user research findings into design requirements for an intervention, and developing prototypes to meet those requirements. This will include strengths and limitations of different approaches (e.g., contrasting interviews and design workshops). This will also include concrete examples of how HCD has been applied in different clinical contexts.

In the second, hands-on portion of the workshop, participants will join small groups to critique and refine research proposals under development. Participants are encouraged to bring their own proposals, but participants without a proposal will still learn through critique and peer mentoring. For each proposal, participants will discuss how to incorporate and refine HCD methods based on concepts from the didactic portion. Facilitators will provide a priori prompts and dynamic feedback based on participants’ needs.

The intended audience includes researchers from any career stage (trainees, early career scientists, established scientists) who will soon conceptualize or submit a research proposal (i.e., a publicly-funded grant or a thesis proposal). Participants should want to improve their capacities to plan HCD processes and communicate those methods effectively. Participants need not be experts in HCD. It will help to have familiarity with HCD, including why it is important and some associated methods, but participants do not need to have applied these methods previously. Participants should bring a laptop or other device on which to share and edit documents.

Learning objectives

Participants will learn to list and describe:

• the principles and phases of a HCD process
• design frameworks and methods for conducting user research, translating research to design, developing prototypes for an intervention
• components of sociotechnical context of an intervention and its role in design
• examples for how to tailor HCD methods and communicate them in the Specific Aims and/or Research Strategy for a research proposal