Chapter 3 62 “tell” their stories using probes of visual scenarios and story elements (Brandt et al., 2012). Several sources on this topic state that groups experiencing communication barriers, such as people with low (health) literacy, learning difficulties, and cultural differences have difficulties understanding the purpose and contents of participatory research activities and vocalizing their thoughts and experiences (Bonevski et al., 2014; Nind, 2008). Using scenarios and story elements as a “probe” has helped our participants in telling their stories without relying merely on verbal communication skills. In addition, the probes helped to shift the focus from the individual. This has helped our participants to become more at ease with the research setting, which could be observed based on the extensiveness of their responses. This is deemed especially helpful for groups at risk of stigmatization (e.g., LHL, obesity, and mental illness) (Auerswald et al., 2017; Birks et al., 2007; Millum et al., 2019). We propose that the nonverbal and low-threshold nature of such probes positively impacts collaboration with disadvantaged groups. Besides storyboarding and scenarios, other nonverbal participatory probing tools, such as cards, artifacts of discussion, taking pictures, and using emoticons could be equally useful (Budig et al., 2018; Nakarada-Kordic et al., 2017; Vandekerckhove et al., 2020). Second, another facet of participatory design we applied in this project was allowing our participants to “enact” future scenarios by physically trying out new concepts (Brandt et al., 2012). Age and education are associated with having limited knowledge of and experience with health technologies (Hofstede et al., 2014). Therefore, we expect that societal groups, such as people with low socioeconomic status or the elderly, could experience barriers in imagining technologies and usage scenarios. “Priming” is a participatory facet that allows participants to immerse themselves in a domain (Sanders et al., 2010). Our use of experience and video prototypes has helped the participants to get a feeling of possible technologies and imagine scenarios of future use. This could be observed, for example, through the responses the augmented reality t-shirt provoked in our participants. Therefore, we propose participatory tools that facilitate interaction and immersion, such as prototypes, mock-ups, and role-play to facilitate priming for technologies. Some aspects of the approach demonstrated in this paper could also be used in practice settings. For example, a practice nurse can use co-constructing stories to discuss multiple aspects of medication use in an easy-to-understand, nonobtrusive, and more concrete way with the patient by presenting and discussing recognizable but fictional situations. Hence, it would be interesting to explore co-constructing stories as a low-cost tool during consultations. 3.4.2 Strengths and limitations Through the participatory activities, we were able to gather important insights into the needs, skills, and preferences of people with LHL that would otherwise remain unarticulated.
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