Mental health treatment plans often require clients to engage in therapeutic activities in between sessions to be effective. However, despite the demonstrated efficacy of “therapy homework,” clients overwhelmingly do not engage in these activities outside of therapy. Thus therapists require nuanced, in depth information about their clients’ lived experience to tailor these therapeutic activities to clients’ life circumstances, to anticipate and address barriers that may come in the way. In this thesis, we explore therapist information needs to tailor therapeutic activities to clients’ life context, and how technology can incorporate this information to better support client engagement in therapeutic activities within and between sessions. First we investigate therapist-client collaboration challenges in setting between-session goals such as therapy homework, then further our understanding of therapist information needs through studying challenges and strategies associated with the practice of behavioral chain analysis in DBT. We contribute an empirical understanding of therapist information needs and data gathering practices to support clients in engaging in therapy activities, such as therapy homework and chain analysis. With this understanding, we propose ways in which technology can be designed to support therapists and clients in working through challenges involving memory, discomfort, and limited self-awareness to improve client engagement in therapeutic activities between sessions.

Health researchers are increasingly using human-centered design methods in order to design usable health technologies and interventions. However, there is little research done about how design is used by Health researchers as well as what challenges Health researchers face when employing design methods and approaches in their work. In addition, conducting multidisciplinary research can be challenging because HCD and Health researchers might value different research outcomes, or might not know how to value each other’s research methods. While prior work documents HCD researchers’ perspectives, little is known from the Health researchers’ perspectives. In this thesis, I investigate multiple Health researchers’ lived experiences with using design methods: how Health researchers perceive design, what challenges they face when using design, and what challenges they face when collaborating with HCD researchers. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 Health researchers who self-identified as having used design methods and worked alongside a design collaborator. I found that Health researchers felt that incorporating user feedback was an integral part of their technology design process; they had difficulty understanding how to implement design approaches and incorporating design into their project timelines; and they had miscommunications with their collaborators due to a lack of shared language. I propose ways in which individuals, universities, funding agencies, and research communities can better support collaborations and the use of design methods by HCD and Health researchers.

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