Participatory Design of a Text Message Scheduling System to Support Young People with Diabetes

Effective self-management of diabetes requires considerable behavioural change
and continuous support from health professionals, which can be expensive.
Information technology has the potential to offer cost-effective patient support,
but internet use mostly relies on the active seeking of information. Text messaging
offers an ideal channel for delivering ëpushí support and facilitating reciprocal
communication between patient and health professional. This article describes a
participatory design methodology to develop a text message scheduling system
for supporting young people with diabetes. The project illustrates how this familiar
design approach can be used in a short-term project to deliver a successful
medical application. Close working between clinician and software developer led
to successive user-informed iterations as the clinician became more aware of the
systemís potential and identified barriers. The result was a reliable, functional,
acceptable and usable system that was effectively implemented in its intended
setting.