Co-development of a configuration interface for the COOK cognitive orthosis for meal preparation: a human-centered design study with occupational therapists

People who sustain a traumatic brain injury can benefit from the use of assistive technologies for cognition, like the Cognitive Orthosis for coOKing (COOK). However, such tools may require personalization for effective use. Although COOK includes multiple personalization options, occupational therapists face challenges with understanding how to configure it due to its complexity and their lack of training. This study thus aimed to: (a) Co-develop a configuration interface that could provide a better User eXperience (UX) for occupational therapists when configuring COOK; and (b) Document the anticipated UX of a mock-up of the configuration interface. First, a mock-up of COOK’s configuration interface, named Config My COOK, was co-developed. Second, a qualitative descriptive research design was used to explore the perspective of occupational therapists from Quebec and Ontario using six online focus groups involving 15 participants. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted. Occupational therapists highlighted three features that had the potential to enhance UX, like the appealing look and perceived intuitivity of the configuration interface, support offered by the interface, and access to features to personalize COOK to clients’ needs. However, four features had the potential to lessen it, including anticipated training requirements, time required for the configuration process, data confidentiality, and anticipated complexity of interacting with the interface. To counteract these obstacles, occupational therapists identified improvement suggestions which could be completed in the prototype phase. The human-centered design approach enabled us to design a configuration interface to personalize COOK to specific clients’ needs, and document its mock-up’s anticipated UX with occupational therapists.