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L. Blackburn1, P. Dall1, S. Chastin1
1Glasgow Caledonian University, Department of Physiotherapy and Paramedicine, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Background: Co-creation is a participatory, transformative and iterative approach to intervention design, which includes service users and key stakeholders in the design process, offers unique insights into applicability of interventions, and allows them to better meet service users’ needs.
Understanding the dynamic between co-creator emotional state and group power dynamics is important for adapting design processes to enhance participant affective experience, group cohesion, and to reduce dropout rates. Emotions can be experienced individually as well as a shared phenomenon and are significant in developing hierarchical structures and governance in group dynamics. Positive emotions aid development of group identity, cohesion, and empathy, which could be crucial to developing appropriate and acceptable co-created interventions.
Understanding the dynamic between co-creator emotional state and group power dynamics is important for adapting design processes to enhance participant affective experience, group cohesion, and to reduce dropout rates. Emotions can be experienced individually as well as a shared phenomenon and are significant in developing hierarchical structures and governance in group dynamics. Positive emotions aid development of group identity, cohesion, and empathy, which could be crucial to developing appropriate and acceptable co-created interventions.
Purpose: Explore co-creator emotions during a co-creation process.
Methods: Six employees from one workplace participated in three workshops to co-create a strategy for maintaining work-life balance. Before the first and after the last workshop, group power dynamics were measured using a questionnaire adapted from Brass & Burckhard (1993). Workshops were video recorded and autonomic activity (heart rate variability, skin temperature, electrodermal activity) was measured continuously using a wrist-worn monitor (Empatica E4). At individual semi-structured interviews, participants were shown five video clips time matched to moments of high autonomic arousal and asked to retrospectively identify emotions. Participants were also asked to explore their emotional experience, co-creator experience, and their reasoning behind their power questionnaire responses. Transcribed interviews were analysed using deductive thematic analysis, using dominant emotions, power questionnaire differentials, and the five emotions linked to videos.
Results: Participants identified a wide range of positive (e.g. enjoyment, happiness, surprise) and negative emotions (e.g. apprehension, resentment, suspicion), with a group pattern changing across workshops. Most participants shared common emotional experiences in workshop one (unpredictability) and workshop two (enjoyment). Emotions experienced by participants in workshop three were more varied, such as comfortable, cautious, enjoyable, and disconnected. Differences in power were reported, which did not appear to negatively impact the experience of co-creation. Having group members with perceived higher power could be experienced as positive, for example acting as a guide or reliving pressure.
Conclusions: Although negative emotions occurred, they did not impact the overall co-creation experience, with the average participant finding enjoyment and use from the workshops. Unequal power dynamics also did not appear to impact the average participant's overall experience. Further research is need to understand how power differences on service user voice in the co-creation design process affects patient outcomes when implementing co-created services.
Implications: This study provides insight into the nature of emotions and power relations in the design process. Creating a safe space for the initial unpredictability of service user emotional experiences can help facilitate later emotions of enjoyment in future workshops. This study also implies that power does not need to be perceived as equal for the co-creation process to be a positive experience.
Funding acknowledgements: This study was completed as part of a student led project to the self-funded Doctor of Physiotherapy programme.
Keywords:
Co-Creation
Emotion
Heart Rate Variability
Co-Creation
Emotion
Heart Rate Variability
Topics:
Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing/physical activity
Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing/physical activity
Did this work require ethics approval? Yes
Institution: Glasgow Caledonian University
Committee: PSWAHS Research Ethics Committee
Ethics number: HLS/PSWAHS/21/130
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
