Design for patient empowerment: Guidelines to design for supporting the self-management of people living with chronic conditions

Management of a chronic condition can be challenging, yet expectations from patients towards self-management have been increasing. Patient empowerment in chronic condition care has been gaining attention as a way of increasing the quality of life of patients and sustaining the limited resources of healthcare services. Design has the potential to facilitate empowerment through the designed products and services, yet how this can be achieved has not been explored. In this paper, we investigate empowerment from the patient’s perspective and present design guidelines to facilitate empowerment. A design research approach was followed utilising design probes. Research methodsinclude observation, interview, cultural probe and co-making workshop. The study was conducted with people living with a chronic condition called lymphoedema and their healthcare providers. This study presents that, patient empowerment is beyond increased power in decision-making, and is associated with everyday life with its competing priorities and un-prescribed adaptations to self-management. We propose that an individual’s readiness for empowerment should be considered to provide the right support at the right time for the patient. In this study, the rich everyday chronic condition experiences are transferred into design guidelines to contribute to the development of future self-management support.