Workshop at Interact 2025 Conference: Towards Heuristics for Inclusive Design of Digital Health Solutions for Older Adults

About the Workshop: 
Digital health interventions (DHIs)—such as mobile apps, patient portals, and telehealth platforms—have become essential tools for managing, treating, and preventing health conditions. However, these technologies often fall short in addressing the needs of older adults, who may face challenges related to accessibility, digital literacy, and cognitive or physical limitations. These gaps can lead to misunderstandings, reduced engagement, and ultimately poorer health outcomes. 

This workshop responds to that challenge. It is part of an international research project aimed at developing evidence-based design heuristics for creating inclusive, usable, and effective DHIs for the ageing population. The project is led by researchers with expertise in medical informatics, human-computer interaction, inclusive design, and healthcare communication. 

During this interactive session, participants will: 

• Engage with a curated set of heuristics for inclusive digital health design 

• Evaluate, vote on, and discuss their relevance and clarity 

• Collaboratively organize heuristics into meaningful categories 

• Share expertise on how to best support older adults in navigating digital health tools 

Workshop Goals: 
By working together, we aim to refine a proposed set of actionable design guidelines that can improve the accessibility and effectiveness of DHIs—ensuring they serve not just the digitally savvy, but also those older adults who do not benefit from innovation as much as they could. 

This workshop contributes to the broader goals of equity, inclusivity, and patient empowerment in digital health—and serves as a foundation for a living, evolving set of heuristics that will be further developed and validated after the session. 

Workshop Schedule (date to be confirmed): 

Duration 3h 

Welcome & Project Introduction (15 Min)
Overview of the project, goals of the session, and key concepts around inclusive design, accessibility, and health literacy for older adults. 

Round of participant introductions – everyone shares their role and interest, or expertise related to digital health, ageing, or inclusive design. 

Workshop Objectives & Proposed Heuristics (15 Min)

Clarification of the session’s goals, overview of the proposed heuristic set, and introduction to the interactive methods to be used. 

Heuristics Voting (20 Min)
Participants assess each heuristic independently and vote (include/exclude) using cards or stickers. 

Group Discussions & Consensus Building (45 Min)
Group sessions to share reasoning behind votes, discuss divergent views, and reach consensus on heuristic selection. 

Break (20 min) 

Card Sorting Activity (30 Min)
Participants collaboratively group heuristics into meaningful categories (e.g. accessibility, understandability, navigation). 

Wrap-up Presentation (15 Min)
Summary of outcomes by workshop leaders. The session will be filmed for documentation and conference presentation. 

Closing Discussion (15 Min)

Open floor for reflections, questions, and closing remarks. Invitation to continue contributing to the development of design heuristics beyond the workshop. 

Target Audience:  
The workshop is open to HCI researchers with emphasis on accessibility, usability, aging issues impacting digital engagement and HCI developers/practitioners, UX/UI and user-centered design researchers and practitioners. 

How to participate: 
To apply, please submit: 

• A short bio (max. 1/2 page) outlining your professional background and expertise 

• A brief statement (3–5 sentences) describing your vision for inclusive design in digital health interventions (DHIs) for older adults and your motivation to participate 

Please email your application to e.zitkus@lboro.ac.uk by [08/07/2025].  

All materials will be provided on site. No prior preparation is required—just your perspective, openness to discussion, and interest in shaping more accessible digital health solutions. 

Organizers: 
This workshop is part of the research project Ensuring Inclusive Design of Digital Health Interventions for the Aging Population. Each organizer brings their own specialized focus, reflected in the contribution to the heuristics development and motivation to organize the workshop. They have extensive expertise in patient-centered digital health, artificial intelligence in medicine and medical informatics, as well as healthcare communication design, inclusive design and digital accessibility. They all have individual interests spanning various aspects of the field of HCI and Aging research. 

Prof Dr Kerstin Denecke is a full professor of medical informatics at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests include medical language processing, artificial intelligence, conversational agents and participatory health informatics and sentiment analysis. Currently, she is leading projects related to sentiment analysis from clinical documents, information extraction from radiology reports and automatic validation of LLM-generated text.  

Dr Emilene Zitkus is a Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Design at Loughborough University whose expertise is in human-computer interaction, digital inclusion, user-centred and user-experience design. Her research interests have been driven by the need for a more accessible and inclusive design of interfaces, services and products. Her recent research projects investigate the intersectionality and use of technology by older adults living alone (Enabling Healthy Ageing by Designing Inclusive Digital Technology); the impact of the digital transition on Older Adults living in the UK (Ageing in a Digitally Connected World). In other projects she has investigated how socio-economic factors, combined with losses of capability among people 60+, impact earlier diagnostic, prevention and treatment of hearing loss (Hear-Brazil: accessible and sustainable mobile solutions for hearing health and care); health monitoring in smart homes (Smart Homes to Monitor Elderly People’s Health Conditions) and the use of digital technology in rural areas (From Seeds to Cups).  

Beatrice Kaufmann is a designer and senior researcher focused on inclusive design and healthcare communication. She leads the project “Talking Pictures,” a visual communication aid for use in care settings and a spin-off of Bern University of Applied Sciences.