Executive Summary
Why this matters
Patients have a different perspective to those working in healthcare. Involving users in the production of your health information will ensure it is relevant, easy to understand and accessible.
Planning engagement
- Plan how users will be involved throughout your project.
- Tell users what their roles and responsibilities will be and what financial support you can offer.
- Consider the types of users you are recruiting. How many do you need, are they from your target audience, do they reflect a broad range of users?
Methods for involving users
- Use a range of different techniques, for example online surveys and focus groups, at different stages of production.
- Whichever method you use, make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from each engagement.
- Always give feedback to users and thank them for their involvement.
Co-producing
- Involving a small number of users to help guide the development of your resource can help ensure the insight you have gathered is fully reflected in the final product.
- User testing is an iterative process – after initial testing, test again at a stage where you can still make changes.