This study explores how changes in infographic design, specifically branding, sourcing, and message framing, affect individuals’ intentions to change their sport supplementation behavior. With the increasing prevalence of dietary supplement use among adolescents and young adults, there is a growing concern about lower nutritional literacy and the associated health risks. Public health bodies, such as the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), face the dual challenge of making scientifically accurate information both accessible and engaging, particularly in a digital media environment that favors shorter content and visual appeal... ... Read more

Recently, the deficiency present in female-specific health has been emphasized.Knowledge and consequently treatments with regards to female-specific symptoms and chronic deceases have been lacking. Previous research has shown the opportunity of female health apps to decrease this discrepancy.
Female health apps simultaneously contribute to women’s health understanding and awareness, while also supplying data for necessary female-specific health research. However, this requires uptake and engagement among consumers. More importantly, it requires uptake among diverse women subgroups of the population. Otherwise, the apps likely contribute to increased health disparities present between different socio-demographic groups and biased female health research.
Therefore, research uncovering the influence of app factors on female health app uptake, while accounting for the diversity in the female population is necessary. The specific female health apps under scrutiny in this research are fertility & menstrual tracking apps (MTA), due to their relative popularity, diverse potential consumer group and importance in women’s lives. Consequently, the following research question is answered in this research to contribute to closing the knowledge gap of MTA preference among diverse women: ’To what extent do various factors influence fertility & menstrual tracking app uptake by women from diverse backgrounds?’ ... Read more

The prevalence of mental health issues among adolescents and young adults is increasing, with social media usage identified as a potential contributing factor. As technology becomes more integral to daily life, the design decisions of social media platforms emerge as significant determinants of users' mental well-being.
Despite awareness of social media's general adverse effects, there is a gap in understanding the specific impact of different design features. Academic literature identifies features like likes and direct messaging as having nuanced effects on mental well-being, but lacks a comprehensive overview for developers to reference. This thesis seeks to bridge this gap, focusing on design features and their psychological impacts to propose design interventions for enhancing mental well-being.
Employing Value Sensitive Design (VSD) as an analytical framework, this study is the first to apply VSD to social media in the context of mental well-being. It involves a tripartite methodology — conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations — to identify significant design features and values related to mental well-being on social media platforms. A novel social media platform, Dime, designed with mental well-being in mind, serves as a case study for evaluating these features and proposing design requirements.
The study identifies 8 key design features affecting mental well-being and outlines 13 values divided into higher and lower levels, facilitating focus on critical values for desired outcomes. It explores value interrelationships and conflicts, particularly noting indirect tensions between values like authenticity and connection, and between personalization, control, and autonomy.
Proposed design interventions aim to resolve identified value conflicts, enhancing authenticity to support connection and enhancing personalization and control to support autonomy. ... Read more

In recent years, the medical world has seen rapid digitalisation. Digitalisation of healthcare and the opportunities of remote monitoring can help to keep the healthcare system affordable and accessible. A promising application of remote monitoring is the use of consumer-grade wearables for clinical care. However, vulnerabilities leave consumer-grade wearables susceptible to cybersecurity and privacy risks. When the wearables gain clinical care functionality, increased risks are problematic for the success of the technology. This research examined this problem by analysing the role of users in the cybersecurity and privacy environment and the impact of human factors on the cybersecurity and privacy system of medical wearables. Vulnerabilities and associated risks were identified with the help of notions from human-centric cybersecurity. To establish a user-centred approach to tackle these risks, the user needs and limitations were examined by performing a quantitative survey research. Based on the results of the survey and the human-centric components of user, usage, and usability, guidelines for the user-centred approach were formulated. These guidelines were subsequently linked with the challenges and attacker-oriented and user-oriented risks to establish recommendations for medical wearable providers. Providers can use these to steer the design of the cybersecurity and privacy system and the structuring of the system environment. The research showed that by taking into account the needs and limitations of users, the cybersecurity and privacy system design can be more effective in tackling user-oriented risks. The research concludes that a user-centred approach to cybersecurity and privacy can contribute to the successful use of consumer-grade wearables for clinical care purposes. ... Read more