Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 5, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 31, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
User-centered Design Process for TourHeart+: An Online Stratified Stepped Care Platform for Mental Well-Being
ABSTRACT
Background:
Internet-based mental health interventions have demonstrated to be effective in alleviating psychological distress and promoting mental well-being. Rather than being standalone interventions, situating Internet-based interventions under a stratified stepped care system can support users to continue with mental health practice and to monitor their mental health status for timely services that are commensurate with their needs. User-centered approach should be used in the development of such online platform to enhance uptake, usability, and adherence so it can support users’ continued adoption and practice of self-care for their mental health.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to describe the iterative design process taken to develop an online stratified stepped care mental health platform, TourHeart+, using user-centered approach to incorporate target users’ perceptions and feedback.
Methods:
The process involved a co-creation workshop with the interdisciplinary development team, user interviews, two usability testing sessions on the online guided self-help interventions of the platform and the flow of registration and mental health assessment, and a card sorting activity on chatbot topics and information architecture of the platform. Data collected from the workshop, usability testing, and card sorting were analyzed inductively and summarized as descriptive statistics if appropriate. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed by NVivo 12.
Results:
In the co-creation workshop, the team generated possible psychological needs of target users and three archetypes of chatbot for the platform. Three main themes and 8 subthemes were identified based on user interviews and four user personas were developed. In the usability testing for guided self-help interventions, 14 feedback and corresponding amendments were made. Results of the survey collected from 104 users during usability testing on registration and assessment found no significant differences on preference ratings between using an interactive online questionnaire tool (namely typeform) and through a chatbot. Facilitators and barriers of registering the platform and completing the mental health assessment were identified through users’ feedback during simulation with mock-ups. Participants’ impressions on the platform included being friendly, being cared for, accepting, and professional. Based on findings of the card sorting sessions, the 27 chatbot topics were revised and grouped under 6 new categories instead of 7 predetermined categories to better match with users’ perceptions and understanding. Some of the page titles of the platform were renamed; filtering tabs and more visual cues were added to improve the congruence between users’ perceptions and the platform structure.
Conclusions:
The iterative process and findings presented in the study are important in developing a personalized platform to optimize users’ acceptance and usability of an online stratified stepped care platform with guided self-help interventions for mental well-being. This design process facilitated the integration of technology, existing scientific evidence, users’ experiences of the platform, and users’ real-life experiences.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.