Health talks

Design for health covers products and services that help people stay well, manage conditions or get care, from fitness trackers and medication reminders to tools for clinicians. Many of them depend on people changing their behaviour over long periods, which makes them as much about psychology as about technology.

This makes health a demanding area for UX work. Information has to be understood, not just presented, habits have to fit into daily life and technology has to suit the place it is used. Persuasive design and behaviour change methods are widely applied here, and the stakes for getting them right are high.

The three talks in this topic run from 2011 to 2018. B. J. Fogg argues that individuals must change habits for better health. Stephen Anderson’s “From Information to Understanding - Solving the Small Data Problems” was recorded at TED in 2012, and Tania Douglas explains that to design better tech you need to understand context (TED, 2018). A sub-topic covers medicine.