At-risk adolescents as experts in a new requirements elicitation procedure for the development of a smart phone psychoeducational trauma-informed care application.
OBJECTIVE
Adolescents from urban, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities of color encounter high rates of adverse childhood experiences. To address the resulting multidimensional problems, we developed an innovative approach, Experiential Participatory and Interactive Knowledge Elicitation (EPIKE), using remote experiential needs elicitation methods to generate design and content requirements for a mobile health (mHealth) psychoeducational intervention.


METHODS
At a community-based organization in a northeastern city, the research team developed EPIKE by incorporating elicitation of input on the graphics and conducting remotely recorded experiential meetings and iterative reviews of the design to produce an mHealth smartphone story application (app) prototype for the participants to critique. The 22 participants were 13- to 17-year-olds, predominantly African American and female, from underresourced communities.


RESULTS
The four goals of the design process were attained: 1) story development from participant input; 2) needs-elicitation that reflected the patient-centered care approach; 3) interactive story game creation that accommodates the participants' emotional and cognitive developmental needs; 4) development of a game that adolescents can relate to and that which matches their comfort levels of emotional intensity.


CONCLUSIONS
The EPIKE approach can be used successfully to identify the needs of adolescents across the digital divide to inform the design and development of mHealth apps.
a College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University , Philadelphia , PA , USA.
Paulina
P
Sockolow
b Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rowan University , Glassboro , NJ , USA.
Seran
S
Schug
c Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, Drexel University , Philadelphia , PA , USA.
Jichen
J
Zhu
d Alliance For Positive Health , Albany , NY , USA.
T J
TJ
Smith
e SUNY Downstate Medical Center , Brooklyn , NY , USA.
Yalini
Y
Senathirajah
a College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University , Philadelphia , PA , USA.
Sandra
S
Bloom
D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D063731:Mobile Applications; D033262:Narration; D020380:Needs Assessment; D021841:Safe Sex / Q000523:psychology; D000068997:Smartphone; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D012985:Software Design; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D014505:Urban Population; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018910:Video Games
Adolescent behavior; adolescent; adverse childhood experience; mHealth application; software design; trauma-informed care