Participatory Research Through Design for Societal Change – A Case Study of Co-Designing a Prototype for Enhanced Cognitive Accessibility of an eHealth Service

This study describes the development of a three-step method called Participatory Research through Design using a co-design and dialogue approach to enhance cognitive accessibility in eHealth services in public healthcare. The method is a combination of Participatory Design, Participatory Action Research and Research through Design (RtD). Together with participants with lived experiences of cognitive impairments we explored the existing personal eHealth services with Participatory Cognitive Barrier Walkthrough and co-designed a prototype for enhanced cognitive accessibility. We used an explorative study design constructing the prototype that presents the preferred state, where the participants' contributions are embedded in the design (e.g., visualization of high-cost protection for healthcare, notifications, read aloud functionality, and photos of drugs). The ownership of the targeted eHealth services was outside the research project, and the co-designed prototype was used as a dialogue tool with stakeholders from the product owner perspective. We propose that our Participatory RtD approach enhances understanding of end-user perspectives in a given context and promote dialogue around complex eHealth services. © 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.