Design with or Design by: Pervasive Technologies to Empower Vulnerable Populations in Health-Related Daily Challenges

Scope

Despite increasing research on technologies that support physical and mental health for vulnerable groups, their meaningful participation in design processes remains limited, potentially exacerbating rather than reducing health disparities. Through a sociotechnical lens, we identify three key knowledge gaps: (1) the need to adapt participatory design methods for vulnerable populations; (2) limited understanding of how vulnerable users engage with personal health tracking technologies for self-management; and (3) persistent digital literacy and accessibility barriers that hinder technology adoption. The full-day workshop will explore innovative approaches to involve vulnerable groups in technology design, empower them through personal data tracking for self-management, and address digital literacy and accessibility challenges. Beginning with an online pre-conference meetup, the workshop will feature participant pitches, followed by breakout sessions organized around three themes: Participatory Methods, Reflection & Self-management, and Digital Literacy & Accessibility. These sessions will identify challenges, generate solutions through facilitated ideation, and synthesize design recommendations and research agendas. The workshop aims to build a community of researchers and practitioners committed to developing inclusive pervasive health technologies that serve vulnerable populations effectively and ethically.

Workshop Aims
Timeline

Submissions deadline: 20 July 2025
Notification deadline: 3 August 2025
Camera-ready deadline: 15 August 2025

Format

We host a full-day workshop in an in-person format. One week before the conference, we will organize an online pre-conference meetup open to anyone interested in this topic. This preparatory session aims to help participants familiarize themselves with key concepts and connect with others sharing similar interests. We will blend informative talks with group discussions to encourage mutual learning and community building. For the workshop, our tentative schedule is below. Regular breaks will be arranged that align with the breaks at the conference. Specifically: 1. Introductions. We will introduce the workshop aims, agenda, and organizers. We will recap on the presentations and discussions during the pre-conference meetup. Next, all participants will give short pitches about their background, projects or position paper. Three groups will then be formed, namely, Participatory Methods, Reflection & Self-management, and Digital Literacy & Accessibility. Participatory Methods will explore how participatory design approaches can be better applied in the context of pervasive health technologies. Reflection & Self-management will explore how data collected in pervasive health technologies could better empower reflection and self-management. Digital Literacy and Accessibility will explore how to better consider digital literacy and accessibility in the design of pervasive health technologies. Each group will go through three breakout sessions. 2. Breakout session 1: Participants will reflect on their own research approaches to discover potential cases or scenarios that are challenging, followed by a round-table discussion to reflect on the main challenges. 3. Breakout session 2: Participants will think of ideas to address the main challenges identified, ideation process will be facilitated using brainwriting techniques, followed by a round-table discussion to reflect on the generated ideas. 4. Breakout session 3: Based on the ideations from session 2, each group will synthesize design recommendations and form a future research agenda facilitated by mapping techniques (e.g., categorized by timescale or domains of interests). 5. Plenary Discussion: When everyone reconvenes, each group representative will present the selected cases/scenarios, design recommendations, and the research agenda. This could help identify connections and differences between the three topic groups. 6. Closing: The organizers will end the workshop by summarizing the main points from the sessions and inviting feedback and ideas on how to plan for future community activities. To foster diverse discussions, participants will be guided and encouraged to rotate between different topic groups across the three breakout sessions, with the flexibility to choose their preferred groups after each break. As a tangible outcome of the workshop, the organisers will compile a summary report of the workshop and share it with participants for their inputs.

Paper Submission

Workshop papers should be submitted through EAI ‘Confy+‘ system, and have to comply with the Springer format.

Workshop papers paper length:

  • Regular paper: 12-15 pages,
  • Short paper: 6-11 pages,
  • Other entry: 2-5 pages (published as a part of the EAI PervasiveHealth 2025 Conference Proceedings in a non-indexed Annex section).

All conference papers undergo a thorough peer review process prior to the final decision and publication. This process is facilitated by experts in the Technical Program Committee during a dedicated conference period. Standard peer review is enhanced by EAI Community Review which allows EAI members to bid to review specific papers. All review assignments are ultimately decided by the responsible Technical Program Committee Members while the Technical Program Committee Chair is responsible for the final acceptance selection. You can learn more about Community Review here.

Publication

All registered workshop papers will be submitted for publishing by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library.

PervasiveHealth proceedings are indexed in leading indexing services, such as Web of Science, Compendex, Scopus, DBLP, EU Digital Library, Google Scholar, IO-Port, MathSciNet, Inspec, and Zentralblatt MATH.

All accepted authors are eligible to submit an extended version in a fast track of:

Papers should be submitted through EAI ‘Confy+‘ system, and have to comply with the Springer format (see Author’s kit – Instructions and Templates).

Workshop Chairs

Gubing Wang

Tilburg University
(Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology),
the Netherlands

Sichen Guo

Eindhoven University of
Technology (Department of Industrial Design),
the Netherlands

Bhakti Moghe

Eindhoven University of
Technology (Department of Industrial Design),
the Netherlands

Xueliang Li

Southern University of Science and Technology (School of Design),
China

Maarten Houben

Eindhoven University of
Technology (Department of Industrial Design),
the Netherlands

Bhakti Moghe

Eindhoven University of
Technology (Department of Industrial Design),
the Netherlands

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