Journal Article

Designing Electronic Problem-Solving Training for Individuals With Traumatic Brain Injury: Mixed Methods, Community-Based, Participatory Research Case Study

Holland, Alexandra, Weng, Yueqi, Schmidt, Matthew, Juengst, Shannon

2026

Overview

Traditional rehabilitation research often excludes the voices of individuals with lived experience of traumatic brain injury (TBI), resulting in interventions that lack relevance, accessibility, and effectiveness. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) offers an alternative framework that emphasizes collaboration, power sharing, and sustained engagement with patients, caregivers, and clinicians. This study aimed to apply CBPR to guide front-end design (empathy interviews, empathy mapping, personas) and to evaluate the sociotechnical-pedagogical usability of the Electronic Problem-Solving Training (ePST) mobile health (mHealth) intervention with TBI partners. A multistep, mixed methods design case methodology was adopted, guided by CBPR principles and learning experience design. Participatory mechanisms included a 33-member Community Advisory Board and 10 Community Engagement Studios that engaged TBI survivors, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers throughout the Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver phases of the Double Diamond model. Iterative activities included empathy interviews (n=14), persona development (n=10), rapid prototyping, and usability testing with 5 participants with TBI using think-aloud protocols and the Comprehensive Assessment of Usability for Learning Technologies instrument. The co-design process successfully translated community feedback into an empathy-informed, user-centered prototype and systematically identified design considerations that single-partner approaches overlook. TBI-specific design requirements emerged, including the need for linear content progression over branching navigation, higher technical performance standards, and explicit content signaling with clarity prioritized over novel interface design. Think-aloud protocols revealed that participants struggled with mobile navigation and branching structures but excelled with sequential content progression. In addition, the input from individuals with TBI, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers led to practical refinements such as shorter microlearning lessons (5-12 min), clearer voiceover tone, and simplified navigation, directly addressing the study's objective of improving accessibility and emotional resonance. Overall usability was high, measured using the Comprehensive Assessment of Usability for Learning Technologies (CAUSLT), with an average score of 4.25 out of 5 (SD 0.72; 95% CI 3.36-5.15; n=5). Knowledge accuracy was 80% (8/10 items; 95% CI 49%-94%; n=5 participants; 2 items each), indicating that the system effectively supported learning and comprehension. Module completion was 100% (5/5; 95% CI 56.6%-100%). Average time-on-task for 10 lesson completions was 11.47 (SD 5.28; range 4.6-21.42) minutes per lesson, demonstrating strong task efficiency and engagement. Highest ratings were observed in the pedagogical usability domain, reflecting that the interface was clear, intuitive, and conducive to learning. Collectively, these findings suggest that applying CBPR across all design stages produced a technically sound, easy-to-use, and pedagogically meaningful mHealth tool specifically tailored for individuals with TBI. Sustained CBPR across full design and development cycles resulted in high usability for ePST for individuals with TBI. Ultimately, this study operationalized a full-cycle pipeline that links sustained community partnership to measured usability outcomes, producing community-informed design principles and a reproducible mixed methods approach for formative mHealth development for TBI.

• Publisher: Journal of Medical Internet Research
• Subject: Adult / Brain / Brain Injuries, Traumatic - rehabilitation / Case studies / Community-Based Participatory Research / Electronics in navigation / Empathy / Female / Humans / Injuries / Male / Methods / Middle Aged / Participant observation / Problem Solving / Telemedicine / Usability testing