Survey
A survey was used to find potential participants for interviewing and further experiments. The survey aimed to collect a list of participants who had in the last 0-2 years been prescribed and had taken short-term medication.
The 0-2 year qualification period was chosen because the experience would be relatively recent to them. If I were to reduce the amount of time since the last prescription, it would severely reduce my accessible pool of potential participants.
Interview
Interviewing potential target users allows me to ask broader questions to develop a deeper more nuanced understanding as recommended by Lazar, Feng and Hochheiser (2010).
The interview asks questions about medical adherence, health apps, and mobile phone notifications for the following topics;
- Attitudes
- Habits
- Knowledge and awareness
- Capability and self-efficacy
The questions have been designed to learn about the needs, goals, frustrations, practices and challenges of potential users.
People will lie to you is a good set of guidelines for creating interview questions that pass the “mom test” i.e. get people to answer questions truthfully rather than with answers to please you.
Evidence gathering
Together with the interview I asked the interviewees to show or send (via email) examples of;
- pills they have previously been prescribed to take and what remains in the pill packet once they had stopped taking them
- tools they had/have used to remind them to take their medication on previous occasions
- reminders that pop-up on their phone and which they pay attention to
Discussing the evidence they mention helps to understand what approaches they use, what works well and what doesn’t. Probing what they want to do that they are currently unable to do using the methods they have previously tried.
Initial interview questions (PDF)
Lazar, J., Feng, J. and Hochheiser, H. (2010). Research methods in human-computer interaction. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley.