Design and Evaluation of Intergenerational Health Collaboration System within the Family
Open Access
- Author:
- Sandbulte, Jomara Mota
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 03, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Jack Carroll, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jack Carroll, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Mary Beth Rosson, Committee Member
Saeed M Abdullah, Committee Member
Matthew Samuel Kaplan, Outside Member
S. Shyam Sundar, Outside Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Human-Computer Interaction
Health Informatics
Design Reseacrh - Abstract:
- Family members have the intrinsic desire to communicate and stay aware of one another’s lives and status (e.g., health) even when existing challenges may come across member’s communication practices (Judge, Neustaedter, Harrison, & Blose, 2011; Neustaedter, Elliot, & Greenberg, 2006; Romero et al., 2007). Family communication and awareness can be affected by different factors including geographical distance since it has become common for members to live apart due to lifestyle decisions or education opportunities, for example (Seiffe-Krenke, 2006). Moreover, as an older member ages, sustainable communication and awareness of one’s status is significant for care provision within the family, especially health care. An example of this phenomenon would be when a mother who lives apart from her daughter checks on her to see whether she is settling in at her new job in a remote place and eating healthy; the daughter worries if her aging parents are getting moderate exercise during winter time. Generally, those families use technology to overcome the challenge of maintaining regular communication (e.g., telephone, emails, text messages (Pew Research Center, 2013)). As a way to address this challenging situation in the family realm, many researchers in HCI have developed technological solutions to support families’ need for communication and awareness such as using video to share experiences among distributed family members (Inkpen, Taylor, Junuzovic, Tang, & Venolia, 2013) or day-to-day activities (Mynatt, Rowan, Craighill, & Jacobs, 2001). Besides assisting families to share general information, there has been a growing interest in the HCI field to develop innovative technology to promote family engagement in health interventions (Colineau, Paris, Marendy, Bhandari, & Shu, 2009; Escobedo et al., 2017; Ferdous et al., 2016). This line of work suggests that family engagement plays a significant role in promoting a healthy lifestyle and improving family’s wellness (Colineau et al., 2009; Escobedo et al., 2017). The family context has the means and the potential to help individuals to make choices that lead to a healthy life (Hubley & Copeman, 2018). For example, one member may engage others in building a culture of health within their family by supporting one another in behavioral changes for a healthier lifestyle (Escobedo et al., 2017; R. W. Johnson, 2017). Given the importance of encouraging family members to actively engage in healthy behaviors, it merits a study that provides a detailed understanding of how health communication is conducted in the family context, specifically considering the family dynamic between elderly parents and adult children. While most studies on intergenerational family communication support activity or health awareness between grandparents/parents with underage children (Colineau et al., 2009; Grimes, Tan, & Morris, 2009; Pina et al., 2017), some researchers in HCI have turned their focus to examine family members – specifically considering elderly parents and adult children – unique challenges, such as providing care and support remotely. However, HCI related literature addresses intergenerational families’ burden on informal caregiving duties and discusses the inefficiency of communication and collaboration (Gutierrez & Ochoa, 2017; Gutierrez, Ochoa, & Vassileva, 2016) rather than looking closely at current practices, needs, and concerns regarding intergenerational family communication and collaboration in healthy living over distance. In this research work, I turn my focus towards intergenerational interaction between elderly parents and adult children and complement previous HCI research by examining intergenerational family members communication practices and challenges around healthrelated topics when living apart. I seek to identify opportunities for developing familycentered health technologies to aid family collaboration in healthy living over distance. In this dissertation, I conducted exploratory studies to understand individuals’ current practices, needs, concerns, and visions in the context of health communication within their family when living apart. Those studies findings helped me to identify and design interactive prototypes which were assessed and validated by potential participants. The proposed design system aimed to help distributed families to be more engaged in conversations about health and to be more aware of each other’s healthy practices that will ultimately benefit families in their efforts to collaboratively build a culture of health in their family context. Finally, working from my findings, I developed and deployed a web-based system called “PhamilyHealth” which provides a space for family members to share, communicate, and encourage one another in healthy behaviors. I fielded and evaluated this system by collecting a mix of self-report measures (e.g., preand post-survey measures; interview after usage) and a range of activity data gathered during the tool use (e.g., comments and photos exchanged). Combining across these multiple forms of data, I identified factors that contribute to make healthy living more present in conversations within the family. I also examined that the effects of increased awareness in one’s behaviors may move the other party’s motivation to intentionally engage in healthy practices. Finally, I discuss lessons learned about designing health interventions for families and how they are useful in raising members’ awareness and promoting family’s interaction.