Data Authority in Future Health

– How to ensure data authority for individuals in a Corporate Environment?

The Aim

In this project, I address the problem of peoples’ lack of data ownership in our world, where data increasingly accompanies our daily lives. For this purpose, the project focuses on the area of health data, as this is particularly sensitive data.

Approach

Since the nature of this project involves the fictional exploration of future service possibilities, the speculative design approach was an important element of my design process, along with the Double Diamond Process.

Outcome

Following the current trend of “Corporate Health”, I created within this speculative project the future health tracking company beFINE. This service places particular emphasis on maintaining people’s data authority.

The Service

beFINE is a health tracking service that goes hand in hand with the trend of Corporate Health. Especially since the increasing number of remote workers, companies are interested in taking care of their employees’ health. Hence, wearable health tracking devices are no longer uncommon. beFINE acts as an external provider for larger companies to improve the health of their employees.

Advantages of beFINE for employees and employer

The main users of beFINE are:

1. companies — who buy the service, improving the overall health of the company

2. employees — who are the end-users, collecting their health data

Ecosystem Map of beFINE

beFINE acts within a whole ecosystem including doctors, the ministry of health, and health insurers besides the main users of companies and employees.

beFINE Health Record, Data Sharing

Besides the Health Tracking Ring, the Health Record gives individuals the chance to decide on how to share their health data and with whom.

Critical Reflection

This service offers an approach to deal responsibly with individual data. However, as a designer, I am aware that once a large amount of data is collected, there is an interest in using that data — for good as well as for worse. Data abuse is happening now and will continue to happen in the future. See what happened with collected Health Data of beFINE:

Critical Service Video by Linda Klotzbach

SO WHAT? Data abuse happens, and we can only watch and hope that it leads to something positive? No — it's everyone’s job to sharpen their conscious handling of data. As almost every service contains or will contain some kind of data, thus service designers must ensure to:

· keep individual data secure
· offer self-determined data use for service user
· educate people about their data rights

The Process

The 3 stages of the project process

Discover

INTERVIEWS The entire project began with a self-defined, fictitious project brief around the problem of opaque communication between humans and intelligent systems combined with mental health therapy. Within the emerging research fields, I made desktop research as well as 19 primary interviews.

3 Expert Interviews
8 Guerilla Interviews
5 Empathy Interviews
3 In-depth Interviews

Primary Research , Notes and Clusters, June 2022

ONLINE SURVEY With this survey, I investigated about people’s relationships with their personal data by confronting participants with different scenarios in which they are asked to share specific data, including a healthcare scenario. It became clear that healthcare settings are a perfect example, where people are naturally vulnerable and therefore more likely to give consent.

69 participants

Online Survey “Peoples’ Data Relationship”, June 2022

Define & Prototype

FUTURE SCENARIOS & CO-CREATION Focussing on the future trend of Corporate Health, let me to the creation of 4 future scenarios which draw utopian and dystopian possibilities of the employee persona Phil. Based on these scenarios, I ran online co-creation sessions to find out the participants’ main concerns about their health data and developed 3 design principles.

2 co-creation sessions
à 90 minutes
6 participants

Trend Research, Future Scenarios, Co-Creation & Design Principles

CONCEPT CREATION & TESTING With the design principles in mind, I developed a conceptual storyline. This storyline highlights a future for persona Phil where corporate health tracking has a positive impact on both him and his employer. This animated storyline created in Figma, I tested with people of Generation Y, who potentially could be the persona Phil in the future.

6 participants
40 min interviews

Extract of Concept Storyboard

Testings of Concept Prototype Animation

EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPE In order to make the concept more tangible, I developed several physical touchpoints – the employment contract, an explanatory video of beFINE health tracking products, a clickable prototype of the Health Record, and physical health data cards. With these health cards, participants decided which data they would share with their GP, their employer, and their therapist.

3 participants
45 min testings