Cultures of participation—for students, by students

Culturally relevant health information is said to benefit diverse populations and is critical for health dissemination and user experience creation. Social media and online content provide mechanisms to engage specific populations while helping to reduce barriers that can often hinder participation and engagement. Using action research and informed by co‐creation theory, the MyHealthImpactNetwork.org initiative seeks to provide a user experience targeting Black female college students. Data were collected from females at a large university located in the Southeast United States. Through focus group participants' feedback, co‐creation with students as design delegates and reviews of social media resentments, MyHealthImpactNetwork.org evolved to include user‐driven content. Results indicate that Black females are interested in HIV prevention information that uses simple, non‐technical health jargon. The information should be, however, socially engaging to enable their voices to be heard, absent of cultural assumptions and biases about Black women, and embody an ownership ethos relative to social content. Informed by principals of canonical action research and the co‐creation that results between the researcher and potential user, these findings suggest that the hedonic dimension underpins the key design lessons. This research helps to fill a void in the literature regarding the creation of user experiences for health‐related messages, particularly those regarding stigmatized conditions, such as HIV, while designing for cultures of participation among under‐represented groups.