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Turning Tables

A Structured Focus Group Method to Remediate Unequal Power during Participatory Design in Health Care

Conference Paper (2018)
Author(s)

Jonas Geuens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Luc Geurts (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Thijs W. Swinnen (University Hospital Leuven)

René Westhovens (University Hospital Leuven)

Maarten Van Mechelen (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)

Vero Vanden Abeele (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Research Group
Codesigning Social Change
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3210604.3210649 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2018
Language
English
Research Group
Codesigning Social Change
Volume number
2
Article number
4
Pages (from-to)
1-5
Publisher
ACM
ISBN (electronic)
978-145035574-2
Event
15th Participatory Design Conference, PDC 2018 (2018-08-20 - 2018-08-24), Hasselt and Genk, Belgium
Downloads counter
157

Abstract

In a participatory design process, patients as well as care providers play a critical role in the design and development of healthcare apps. However, special attention should be given to problematic group dynamics that may arise from unequal power across participants. In this paper, we present Turning Tables, a focus group method, inspired by social interdependence theory (SIT), to mitigate asymmetric power. First, we present our SIT-inspired protocol for conducting focus groups. Next, via a qualitative analysis of 2 focus groups, we describe group dynamics and evaluate our method. Observations show that by splitting teams into patients versus care providers, and by specifying turn-taking (giving the floor to patients first), unequal power can be mitigated. However, observations also show that participants default back into their traditional roles during less formalized moments.