User centred development process and design approach within an aged care setting requires a multidisciplinary team (MDT) of diversely skilled professionals who all work together to deliver the product.
MDTs can have any combination of the following expertise:
- Software developers (front, back and full stack)
- Scrum Master
- Project and product managers
- Business analysts
- Designers – visual, user interface (UI), user experience (UX), graphic, information, interaction (IxD)
- User experience researchers and strategists
- Marketing and promotional staff
- Consumer representatives – residents, clients, families
- Aged care workers – direct care and auxiliary staff
- Representatives from the business, administration and corporate arms of the organisation
For MDTs to work cohesively together, clarity around expectations, objectives or purpose, roles and responsibilities [1] across the development process is required. [2] Effective MDTs are inclusive, recognising each member's value to the group, [1] offering an environment where all voices are respected and contributions are equally valued. Success also requires clear and effective communication, which can be challenging when members use different vocabulary, terminology or jargon, are from diverse backgrounds or have varying expectations of management processes. [1]
Before kicking off any design and development process, MDT should agree on several aspects of the approach to the design and development of the product. It is important for MDT to:
- Understand the scope, extent, breadth and definition of the problem and the potential solution determining the choice of co-design approach.
- Decide on an agile approach to development that will support the goals of the product within the constraints of:
- resource availability, the environment of implementation,
- context of testing and cycles of improvements across the period before deployment.
The most popular user-driven approaches are Scrum and Kanban. These are suitable for small-medium MDT with the ability to incrementally build solutions after testing in stages. The aim is to optimise efficiency during development. [3]
- Agree on levels of involvement of user engagement within the design and development process. [1] Recruitment and availability of staff to participate in testing cycles should also be considered.
- Have a plan to collect, collate, analyse and translate user feedback across the development and evaluation cycle.
- Decide on the weight participant feedback carries to inform improvements. Given that end-user feedback is contextualised, this should be prioritised over opinions offered by stakeholders. [4]
- For example, business professionals' feedback would inform design relating specifically to interactions at the interface between the user, data collection and business processes.