Designing remote care services for eating disorders: HCI considerations and provocations based upon service user experience and requirements.

The use of remote support for eating disorder recovery has become increasingly important since COVID-19. It is important to explore the suitability of current platforms; to do this effectively, co-design with people with lived experience (PWLE) is essential. RHED-C (Remote Healthcare for Eating Disorders throughout COVID-19) is a 3-year project focused on future remote care solutions. As part of this larger project, we conducted a two-stage process exploring user experiences with remote care and key design considerations. The first, exploratory stage involved workshops and semi-structured interviews with 27 PWLE based within the UK. Reported barriers included complicated platform functionalities leading to sensory overload and a lack of perceived self-efficacy; poor or unstable internet access disrupting the therapeutic space; a focus upon the quantification of eating disorders (e.g., focus on BMI) that was perceived as triggering. Participants wanted more sharing of honest recovery stories to inspire, and help them to envisage recovery. At the second stage, a creative team comprising researchers, a service provider and person with lived experience reflected upon these findings to identify provocations for future co-design of remote care based around: i. The value of qualitative research methodologies and avoidance of quantification; ii. Need for design that minimizes physical representation and sensory overload; iii. Importance of honest, recovery-focused content that fosters realistic expectations; iv. promotion of digital accessibility and self-efficacy. These provocations are discussed in this paper.