Engaging Users to Design Positive Technologies for Patient Engagement: the Perfect Interaction Model

This chapter elaborates on the design of positive pechnologies for patient engagement. According to literature, new technologies for patient engagement should be "ecologically" designed, taking into account the personal situation and needs of the patients. This could be done by adopting a User-Centered design approach, which is based on the involvement of the end-users of the technology from the very first stages in the design process. In order to achieve this objective, this chapter will propose a User-Centered approach to the design of new technologies applied to the healthcare context. A new operational model labelled PIM (Perfect Interaction Model) which is able to analyze the intentions, the feelings, and the real-life context of the patients in the technologies’ design process is also described. Moreover, the PIM is then associated with the PHE Model, highlighting the important aspects of patient engagement that should be be considered in the design process.