User-centered Design of the eyeGuide: A Tailored Glaucoma Behavior Change Program.

PURPOSE

We employed user-centered design to refine a prototype of the eyeGuide, a novel, tailored behavior change program intended to improve medication adherence among glaucoma patients.

PATIENTS

Glaucoma patients age 40 years and above prescribed ≥1 glaucoma medication were included.

METHODS

The eyeGuide consists of tailored educational content and tailored testimonials in which patients share how they were able to overcome barriers to improve their medication adherence. A hybrid of semistructured diagnostic and pretesting interviews were used to refine the content of the eyeGuide. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit a study population representative of the glaucoma patient population. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached. Interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed verbatim. Three researchers analyzed the transcripts, generated a codebook, and identified key themes using NVivo 10.0 to further refine the eyeGuide.

RESULTS

Twenty-one glaucoma patients were interviewed; mean age 72±12.4 years, 5 (24%) African Americans, 9 (43%) with poor self-reported adherence, 10 (47.6%) age 75 years and above, 10 (47.6%) with poor vision, and 9 (42.9%) women. Qualitative analysis identified 5 important themes for improving glaucoma self-management: social support, patient-provider relationship, medication routine, patients' beliefs about disease and treatment, and eye drop instillation. All participants expressed satisfaction with in-person delivery of the eyeGuide and preferred this to a Web-based module. Participant feedback resulted in revised content.

CONCLUSIONS

User-centered design generated improvements in the eyeGuide that would not have been possible without patient input. Participants expressed satisfaction with the tailored content.