Abstract
This paper presents an exploratory study of how conversational interfaces can be used to facilitate peer support among adults with ADHD participating in an online self-help program. Peer support is an important feature of group therapy, but it is often disregarded in online programs. Using a research-through-design approach, a low fidelity chatbot prototype named Terabot was designed and evaluated. The goal of Terabot is to guide participants through peer support conversations related to a specific exercise in an online self-help program. The prototype was evaluated and refined through two Wizard of Oz (WoOz) trials. Based on design workshops, analysis of chat logs, data from online questionnaires and an evaluation interview, the findings indicate that the concept of a chatbot guiding a peer support conversation between adults with ADHD who participate in an online self-help program is a promising approach. We believe that a chatbot can help establishing structure, predictability and encouragement in a peer support conversation. This study contributes with experiences from an exploration of how to design conversational interfaces for peer support in mental health care, how conversational interfaces can facilitate peer support through structuring conversation, and how the WoOz approach can be used to inform the design of chatbots.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abd-alrazaq, A.A., Alajlani, M., Alalwan, A.A., Bewick, B.M., Gardner, P., Househ, M.: An overview of the features of chatbots in mental health: a scoping review. Int. J. Med. Informatics 132, 103978 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.103978
Alvarez-Jimenez, M., Alcazar-Corcoles, M.A., González-Blanch, C., Bendall, S., McGorry, P.D., Gleeson, J.F.: Online, social media and mobile technologies for psychosis treatment: a systematic review on novel user-led interventions. Schizophr. Res. 156(1), 96–106 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2014.03.021
American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5, 5th edn. Technical report, American Psychiatric Association, Washington, D.C (2013)
Baumeister, H., Reichler, L., Munzinger, M., Lin, J.: The impact of guidance on Internet-based mental health interventions – a systematic review. Internet Interv. 1(4), 205–215 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2014.08.003
Bickmore, T.W., Utami, D., Matsuyama, R., Paasche-Orlow, M.K.: Improving access to online health information with conversational agents: a randomized controlled experiment. J. Med. Internet Res. 18(1), e1 (2016). https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5239
Braun, V., Clarke, V.: What can “thematic analysis" offer health and wellbeing researchers? Int. J. Qual. Stud. Health Well-being 9(1) (2014). https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v9.26152
Cameron, G., et al.: Assessing the usability of a chatbot for mental health care. In: Bodrunova, S., et al. (eds.) INSCI 2018. LNCS, vol. 11551, pp. 121–132. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17705-8_11
Clark, J.: Medicalization of global health 2: the medicalization of global mental health. Global Health Action 7(1), 24000 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v7.24000
Dahlbäck, N., Jönsson, A., Ahrenberg, L.: Wizard of Oz studies – why and how. Knowl.-Based Syst. 6(4), 258–266 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1016/0950-7051(93)90017-N
Doherty, G., Coyle, D., Sharry, J.: Engagement with online mental health interventions: an exploratory clinical study of a treatment for depression. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2012, pp. 1421–1430. ACM, New York (2012). https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208602
Dohsaka, K., Ryota, A., Higashinaka, R., Minami, Y., Maeda, E.: Effects of conversational agents on human communication in thought-evoking multi-party dialogues. In: Proceedings of SIGDIAL 2009: the 10th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group in Discourse and Dialogue, pp. 217–224. Association for Computational Linguistics, London (2009)
Elmasri, D., Maeder, A.: A conversational agent for an online mental health intervention. In: Ascoli, G.A., Hawrylycz, M., Ali, H., Khazanchi, D., Shi, Y. (eds.) BIH 2016. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 9919, pp. 243–251. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47103-7_24
Eysenbach, G., Powell, J., Englesakis, M., Rizo, C., Stern, A.: Health related virtual communities and electronic support groups: systematic review of the effects of online peer to peer interactions. BMJ 328(7449), 1166 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.328.7449.1166
Faulkner, A., Basset, T.: A helping hand: taking peer support into the 21st century. Mental Health Soc. Inclusion 16(1), 41–47 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1108/20428301211205892
Fitzpatrick, K.K., Darcy, A., Vierhile, M.: Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot): a randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health 4(2), e19 (2017). https://doi.org/10.2196/mental.7785
Følstad, A., Brandtzæg, P.B.: Chatbots and the new world of HCI. Interactions 24(4), 38–42 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3085558
Følstad, A., Skjuve, M., Brandtzaeg, P.B.: Different chatbots for different purposes: towards a typology of chatbots to understand interaction design. In: Bodrunova, S.S., et al. (eds.) INSCI 2018. LNCS, vol. 11551, pp. 145–156. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17705-8_13
Håvik, R., Wake, J.D., Flobak, E., Lundervold, A., Guribye, F.: A conversational interface for self-screening for ADHD in adults. In: Bodrunova, S.S., et al. (eds.) INSCI 2018. LNCS, vol. 11551, pp. 133–144. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17705-8_12
Hurvitz, N.: Peer self-help psychotherapy groups and their implications for psychotherapy. Psychother: Theory, Res. Pract. 7(1), 41–49 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086549
Lucas, G.M., et al.: Reporting mental health symptoms: breaking down barriers to care with virtual human interviewers (2017). https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2017.00051
Ly, K.H., Ly, A.M., Andersson, G.: A fully automated conversational agent for promoting mental well-being: a pilot RCT using mixed methods. Internet Interv. 10, 39–46 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2017.10.002
Mead, S., Hilton, D., Curtis, L.: Peer support: a theoretical perspective. Psychiatr. Rehabil. J. 25(2), 134–141 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1037/h0095032
Mohr, D.C., Cuijpers, P., Lehman, K.: Supportive accountability: a model for providing human support to enhance adherence to ehealth interventions. J. Med. Internet Res. 13(1), e30 (2011). https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1602
Naslund, J.A., Aschbrenner, K.A., Marsch, L.A., Bartels, S.J.: The future of mental health care: peer-to-peer support and social media. Epidemiol. Psychiatr. Sci. 25(2), 113–122 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045796015001067
O’Leary, K., Schueller, S.M., Wobbrock, J.O., Pratt, W.: “Suddenly, we got to become therapists for each other": designing peer support chats for mental health. In: CHI 2018 Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, p. e331. ACM, Montreal (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173905
Philipsen, A.: Psychotherapy in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: implications for treatment and research. Expert Rev. Neurother. 12(10), 1217–1225 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1586/ern.12.91
Seering, J., Luria, M., Kaufman, G., Hammer, J.: Beyond dyadic interactions: considering chatbots as community members. In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019, pp. 450:1–450:13. ACM, New York (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300680
Solberg, B.S., Haavik, J., Halmøy, A.: Health care services for adults with ADHD: patient satisfaction and the role of psycho-education. J. Atten. Disord. 23(1), 99–108 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054715587941
Solomon, P.: Peer support/peer provided services underlying processes, benefits, and critical ingredients. Psychiatr. Rehabil. J. 27(4), 392–401 (2005). https://doi.org/10.2975/27.2004.392.401
Sonne, T., Marshall, P., Obel, C., Thomsen, P.H., Grønbæk, K.: An assistive technology design framework for ADHD. In: Proceedings of the 28th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, OzCHI 2016, pp. 60–70. ACM, New York (2016). https://doi.org/10.1145/3010915.3010925
Tielman, M., Neerincx, M., van Meggelen, M., Franken, I., Brinkman, W.P.: How should a virtual agent present psychoeducation? Influence of verbal and textual presentation on adherence. Technol. Health Care 25(6), 1081–1096 (2017). https://doi.org/10.3233/THC-170899
Vaidyam, A.N., Wisniewski, H., Halamka, J.D., Kashavan, M.S., Torous, J.B.: Chatbots and conversational agents in mental health: a review of the psychiatric landscape. Can. J. Psychiatry 64(7), 456–464 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743719828977
Yang, Q., Cranshaw, J., Amershi, S., Iqbal, S.T., Teevan, J.: Sketching NLP: a case study of exploring the right things to design with language intelligence. In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2019. ACM, Glasgow (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300415
Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., Evenson, S.: Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2007, pp. 493–502. ACM, New York (2007). https://doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240704
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nordberg, O.E. et al. (2020). Designing Chatbots for Guiding Online Peer Support Conversations for Adults with ADHD. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11970. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39540-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39540-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39539-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39540-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)