Translating the Knowledge Gap Between Researchers and Communication Designers for Improved mHealth Research

Abstract

Our industry insight focuses on the challenges for health researchers collaborating with communication designers during the development of an App for improving maternal mental health and parenting stress. We discuss the challenges around explicating and communicating tacit and domain knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. We believe this report can widen communication design’s traditional focus on users in mHealth research to consider partnerships with academic researchers. The lessons learned from our experience developing a mHealth program can be used to reduce challenges in future mHealth research, especially for collaborations between health researchers and communications designers. Considering the growth of interest in mHealth, this is extremely relevant for future team satisfaction, the optimal use of research funds and industry time, and faster development of effective mHealth tools. This is the accepted manuscript version of the following publication: Rioux, C., Weedon, S., MacKinnon, A. L., Watts, D., Salisbury, M. R., Penner-Goeke, L., Simpson, K. M., Harrington, J., Tomfohr-Madsen, L. M. & Roos, L. E. (2022). Translating the Knowledge Gap Between Researchers and Communication Designers for Improved mHealth Research. SIGDOC '22: The 40th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, USA, 157–160. doi: 10.1145/3513130.3558997