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Prototyping a Mental Health Smartphone Application

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Design, User Experience, and Usability. Case Studies in Public and Personal Interactive Systems (HCII 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12202))

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Abstract

Mental illness among young people has reached epidemic proportions. One solution proposed for addressing this issue is increasing their mental health literacy, which research has found to be negatively correlated with the chance of developing a mental illness. This study suggests that a smartphone app may be the best medium for raising the mental health literacy of young people. Most young people own smartphones, which have the technology to utilize both traditional and unique techniques for delivering information on mental illness. To explore the potential of a mental health literacy app, a literature review on existing mental health apps was conducted. In addition, 15 young adults equally divided into 3 focus groups were asked to discuss their knowledge of and opinions on mental health, technology design, mental health apps, and what they would theoretically like to see in a mental health literacy app. The results found a varied level of knowledge about mental health among the participants. In addition, participants offered several guiding principles for the development of mental health apps, such as suggesting they focus on providing users information, not a diagnosis. Further the results offer guidelines on the design of a mental health literacy app, the likely support it would receive from young people, and its necessity for this demographic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL, 34243, USA

    Julian Hunter & Tania Roy

Authors
  1. Julian Hunter
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  2. Tania Roy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tania Roy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aaron Marcus and Associates, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Aaron Marcus

  2. World Usability Day and Bentley User Experience Center, Newton Center, MA, USA

    Elizabeth Rosenzweig

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Hunter, J., Roy, T. (2020). Prototyping a Mental Health Smartphone Application. In: Marcus, A., Rosenzweig, E. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. Case Studies in Public and Personal Interactive Systems. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12202. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49757-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49757-6_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49756-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49757-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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