Keywords

1 Introduction

With the deepening of aging population degree, medical and nursing problems are increasingly prominent, and the demand for elderly health services is increasing. The mainstream health education services mainly include community offline lectures, offline free consultation, TV health programs, etc. In recent years, some health service software has also been available on mobile clients, WeChat mini programs, and WeChat public accounts. However, there are some problems such as poor systematic knowledge, lack of pertinence and inconvenient note taking, which make the elderly adults unable to remember health information even if they listen to lectures repeatedly. With the rapid development of computer technology and information technology, it is possible to replace human services with new technologies of online health education. Health education service system need to be developed to suit the aging trend combining with the current background.

2 Related Work

2.1 The Problems of Health Education Information

Due to the low threshold of Internet access and the weak supervision ability of network information, the reliability of health education information is difficult to guarantee [1]. In terms of user experience, the existing health education platform has two problems. First, the growth of health knowledge is inconsistent with the change of health behavior. It may because that the change of eating behavior and lifestyle is not achieved in a short period of time, it needs a process, so long-term health education for the elderly should be valued. The second is the lack of consideration for the unique needs of elderly users. Because the elderly population has differences in the desire for health knowledge, economic conditions, and the expanse they can afford, which leads to different needs for health education. To meet the special physical health needs of the elderly adults, so that the elderly can always maintain a good mentality [2]. The main contents of health education for the elderly should be to improve health level, cultivate health awareness and build up self-confidence of the elderly. Xue Zhi’an believes that there should be diversity in the methods of health education for the elderly, and it will be explained in a variety of forms by collecting various vivid examples of feedback from the masses, which is easy to understand [3].

2.2 Design Principles of Health Education System

According to the analysis of existing products, the design principles of the health education system in the mobile phone platforms are summarized as follows: (1) Systematic and standardized curriculum settings. Health education information should be authoritatively certified to avoid misleading elderly users with incorrect information. (2) Personalized customization should be provided. Digital health education products need to be designed according to the assessment of the user’s physical condition and health knowledge. (3) The interaction mode and visual interface should be optimized for the elderly users. (4) Persuasion mechanism should be used in system design. As the learning ability of the elderly group declines, the group’s initiative to learn systematic knowledge has also decreased to a certain extent. Elderly health education products should lastingly and efficiently stimulate elderly people to learn health knowledge, and at the same time help elderly users form positive feedback in the learning process.

3 Research Methods

3.1 Research Steps

  1. 1.

    Learned the service design trend, research models, related technology and interaction mode of health education for the elderly at home and abroad by doing literature research. Then the research method of health education for the elderly in line with China’s national conditions was proposed.

  2. 2.

    Focus group was held in the elderly health service center in nearby community. The existing health service design was analyzed, so as to get a deep understanding of the health education system design.

  3. 3.

    Used the service design thinking to analyze the existing services of health education and got the idea of improving design. Studied the behavioral habits and mental models of the elderly adults through questionnaires and focus group method [4], so as to make sure the system design conforms with the elderly’s behavioral habits.

  4. 4.

    Drew user journey map [5] and valued the user experiences of the existing health education service system. Then the pain points of the existing service were found. By holding a co-design [6] workshop, stakeholders were invited together to discuss each touch point of the service and find out how to improve it.

  5. 5.

    Completed the research content arrangement of health education service for the elderly adults. The information architecture of the health education applications was proposed.

4 Case Study

4.1 Focus Group Method

Discussion Guides.

Based on the results of the initial survey, this section applies the focus group method to study the motivation, touch points and pain points of elderly users when using the health education service systems. Focus group method was used to get in-depth understanding of users’ behaviors and psychological activities, ensuring efficient and thorough information collection.

First, the content and purpose of the focus group discussion was introduced to users through a simple dialogue and the user’s basic information and experience in participating in health education activities were collected.

The basic discuss questions were as follows:

  1. ①

    Environmental background

    1. 1.

      Please briefly introduce your age, cultural background, and family income.

    2. 2.

      What is your current physical condition? Do you usually pay attention to health information?

    3. 3.

      What is your motivation for focusing on health education information?

    4. 4.

      Do you have a health education app on your mobile phone?

  2. ②

    Touch points of service

    1. 1.

      Please briefly recall the entire process of participating in health education activities in the community.

    2. 2.

      What are the inconveniences when receiving the “Health Lecture” notice from the neighborhood committee?

    3. 3.

      What are the good experiences and bad experiences during the community health lecture?

    4. 4.

      What are your gains and difficulties after the community health lecture?

  3. ③

    Function definition

    1. 1.

      What kind of health knowledge do you usually pay attention to on your mobile phone?

    2. 2.

      In what way do you think health knowledge is presented that can be accepted more easily on your mobile phone?

    3. 3.

      What persuasion methods do you think can help you learn more effectively?

    4. 4.

      What problems do you usually worry about when using the software?

4.2 Selection of Participants

The research object of this paper is 60–70-year-old people, because their physiological conditions are gradually declined and this group is prone to various chronic diseases. Compared with other groups, they are more concerned about health information, and have basic smart phone operation capabilities. This article adopted a semi-open interview. According to the above requirements, 10 qualified target users were selected. The discussion lasted about 100 min. The place of discussion was the elderly health service center in Lingyun community in Shanghai.

4.3 User Journey Map of Health Education Design

According to the focus group result, the user journey map of health education service in this community was drawn with the whole process of participating in the community health education activities (Fig. 1). The existing user journey map was mainly divided into four stages: receiving the notice, entering the classroom, listening to the lecture and leaving the place.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

User journey map of health education service

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Through the user’s emotional experience, we find that the main touch points of the elderly user’s emotional decline in participating in health education services are:

(1) The dissemination of offline health education information is limited and less influential. (2) The lecture time is fixed and cannot be played back if it conflicts with the user’s time. (3) Some important details in lectures are easy to be ignored. (4) Content cannot be customized according to personal situation. (5) Lack of long-term schedule and feedback tracking for health lectures. (6) Health knowledge is hard to remember after leaving the lecture room. From the analysis of the service journey map, the design gap in the current health education service was found, and new requirements and research contents for the design of online health education system were put forward.

4.4 Co-design Workshop

According to the collected user interview information and user demand feedback, we invited stakeholders to participate in the co-design workshop, and rethink the structure of the whole service process by card sorting method. First, the host of the workshop invited participants to classify the cards according to the closed card classification method, that is, according to the information structure logic determined by the designer. The cards were classified into different categories, and the categories of the cards were compiled according to the content of the user interviews in the previous stage. Secondly, the interview content cards of 10 users were classified in the Table 1 for further research.

Table 1. First card classification
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Finally, for the second card classification, it was required to supplement the second level information in the first card classification according to the experience and creativity of participants. Then participants were asked to re-classify and summarize the second level information. The classification logic was not limited (Table 2).

Table 2. Part of the second card classification
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Through two card-classifications, the experience elements of the elderly health education service and the system information architecture were obtained by stakeholders’ co-design. Online health education service system was mainly divided into three parts: personal information, content design and interaction process.

5 Conclusion

The purpose of this paper is to study the design method of health education service system which meets the needs of the elderly users. Firstly, by studying many health education products, we found the problems in existing systems and summarized the design principles. Secondly, through focus group user research and service experience analysis, the pain points were found out in the aging health education system. Thirdly, a new service design information architecture was proposed through users’ co-design workshop. This design method may contribute to the relevant work for improving the elderly adults’ experience of the service system. In the future works, we will design the interaction prototype and test users’ feedback to the system with different persuasive strategies.