HearHealth: a co-designed online support service empowering consumers with hearing loss

We will directly address a key action area in the Government’s 2019 Roadmap for Hearing Health: “Develop and publish through a single, trusted access point, key information needed to enable consumers to make informed choices about pathways for gaining support for hearing loss” This project involves an evidence-based and theory-driven user-centred Design Thinking principle, that promotes close collaboration between consumers; Deafness Forum Australia (peak body representing 3.5 million Australians with hearing loss); clinicians and researchers to identify end-user needs and develop design solutions; resulting in a usable, acceptable and effective digital solution: HearHealth website. Consumers are at the centre of all phases of Design Thinking: 1) Empathise and Define– Surveys/interviews to better understand unmet needs in accessing/ engaging connected hearing health information and supports; 2) Ideate - ideation meetings to identify solutions that can be developed into prototype ideas to solve unmet needs; 3) Prototype - develop mini viable products designed to test specific elements of the website. This involves building on previous iterations until a usable prototype is ready for real-life testing with end-users; 4) Evaluate - 3 sub-studies (think-aloud test; remote usability study; heuristic evaluation) will yield insights on different aspects of usability.
Health outcomes (self-efficacy, eHealth literacy and attitudes to hearing loss) will be collected through validated scales. Final refinements based on evaluation data will propel the prototype into the final draft of HearHealth, allowing for its scale-up. Hence, HearHealth will be a promising preventive and public health strategy that: facilitates consumer engagement and education; enables interactive tools to increase health literacy and self-efficacy; incorporates clear hearing health awareness messages on e.g. safe listening practices; and promotes proactive self-management behaviours among consumers with hearing loss.