Developing mHealth IT for Older Adult Medication Safety: Remote Participatory Co-Design Using the RAPID Method

Background: Participatory co-design is a design approach that involves end users in intervention design and its use in health care applications has become widespread. Traditionally, co-design has been conducted in person in a laboratory-based setting; however, it has recently shifted to being performed remotely. Remote co-design has the potential to overcome some of the limitations of traditional in-person approaches, including expanding a study's geographic reach, recruiting participants from underrepresented groups, reducing power imbalances between researchers and participants, and enhancing engagement through online tools. Given these benefits, further reporting and refinement of remote co-design methods are needed. Objective: This paper's objective is to present our Remote and Accessible Participatory Intervention Design (RAPID) method and discuss the choices and challenges we encountered adapting participatory co-design for remote use. Methods: We adapted our previously developed 5-step in-person participatory co-design method for health intervention design. To apply the adapted co-design method, we recruited 2 groups of 5 participants (one of older adult pharmacy patients and the other of pharmacy staff) to design a digital kiosk for use by older adults to promote safe over-the-counter medication purchases in retail pharmacies. Results: Adaptations made to the co-design process were classified under the following categories: facilitation; collaboration, communication, and sensemaking; accessibility and universality; tangible tools and games; and research compliance. Anecdotally, the remote co-design process took longer when compared to in person due to shorter sessions and between-session refinement, but it allowed for flexible scheduling and makeup sessions when required. Conclusions: Our RAPID method offers an approach to remote co-design that other teams can implement or adapt to their needs. Our experiences with RAPID identify certain drawbacks to remote co-design; however, these are balanced by advantages in convenience and flexibility.