An experiment on data sharing options designs for eHealth interventions

BACKGROUND: With eHealth technology interventions, users' personal health data can be easily shared among different stakeholders. Users should decide with whom they want to share their data. As support, most eHealth technology has data sharing options functionalities. However, there is little research on how to design these visually. In this paper, we took two possible data sharing options designs - data and party perspective – for an existing eHealth technology intervention, and we explored them. OBJECTIVE: The aim was to find which of the two designs is the best in terms of trust, privacy concerns, ease of use, and information control. Additionally, to investigate how these factors influence each other with also the goal of giving practical advice on designing for privacy. METHOD: We conducted a between-subjects online design experiment (N = 123). After having visualised one of the two data sharing options designs, participants filled in an online questionnaire. To analyse the data, t-test analyses, correlation analyses, and backward regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Information control scored higher in the data perspective condition (t (97) = 2.25, p = .03). From the different regression analyses, we found that trust and ease of use play a role in all sharing-related factors. CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that the design of data-sharing options in eHealth technology affects the experience of the user, mostly for trust and ease of use. In the end, we provided several actionable design advices on how to design for privacy.