Little Journey - Usability Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Little Journey - Usability Study
IRAS ID
341609
Contact name
Lucy Cooper
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Little Journey
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 1 months, 23 days
Research summary
Little Journey has developed an app which provides engaging, interactive and age-appropriate content designed to help children and families feel more prepared and relaxed coming to hospital and improve experience of healthcare. Additionally, Little Journey would like to collect further information from children and their family before coming to hospital to help hospital staff address individual’s needs.
It is important that the Little Journey app is usable and accessible for everyone. Feedback collected through this research is needed from children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis to further improve the app and its accessibility.
The study will recruit children aged between 3-12-years-old with a diagnosis of ASD who are registered as a patient at Birmingham Children's Hospital (BCH), alongside their parent/guardian/legal representative. The study involves a single visit to the Clinical Research Facility at BCH of approximately 1 hour.
The children and their parent/guardian/legal representatives will be shown how to use the app. The child and their parent/guardian/legal representative will then be asked to complete a set of tasks using the app. This will include answering some questions about the child’s communication preferences, their values and what they like to do, and how the parent/guardian/legal representative would like to be supported by the hospital. A member of the research team will then ask some questions related to the ease of use and accessibility of the app to gather participant’s feedback. This will be audio recorded to capture feedback. The interactive task scenario will be video filmed where consent for this has been provided. Participant’s feedback and recommendations will be written into a report by the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Devices, digital and robotics, alongside edited video footage, and provided to Little Journey to support the app’s future development. Participant’s names and any personal details will not be provided to Little Journey.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/PR/0962
Date of REC Opinion
19 Aug 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion