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Co-Production of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Digital Platform for Families of Individuals Impacted by Psychosis

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Abstract

Education and skills training have consistently been recognized as an unmet need for caregivers of individuals with psychosis, as traditional models of clinician-delivered family interventions remain inaccessible to most caregivers across low-, middle-, and high-income countries. We endeavored to expand access to psychosis education and skills training by co-develo** a digital training platform with experts and families. We engaged in collaborative co-design sessions with caregivers who had received training in Psychosis REACH—an evidence-based psychosocial family intervention for psychosis—to elicit design principles, develop a functional prototype, and engage in usability testing of an online interactive training program. Seven participants reported six design principles for a prototype. These included simplicity, accessibility, skill acquisition, usability, sense of community, and hope. Guided by these principles, participants’ preferred features were (1) online modules with didactic content, (2) a training “coach” conversational agent to provide instruction and feedback to users, and (3) a conversational agent simulation of an individual experiencing psychosis with whom users can practice skills. Participants completed the usability testing. The levels of ease of use ranged from 4.2 to 4.8 on a 5-point scale with 5 being easiest to use and the level of usefulness ranged from 4 to 4.75 on a 5-point scale, with 5 being most useful. This study is the first to develop a digital platform for family caregivers to support interactive skills training for psychosis caregiving at home. Iterative user-centered design resulted in a functional alpha prototype ripe for testing. Future directions include testing the design requirements on more diverse users and evaluating the effects of the online platform on the caregiving experience.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the University of Washington Family & Caregiver Advisory Board for their guidance on the user-centered design and recruitment process; and our caregiver end users for their feedback on the content and wireframes.

Funding

This work was funded by the University of Washington Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions innovation grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA, USA

    Sunny Chieh Cheng & Myra Divina

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    Sarah Kopelovich, Jennifer Blank & Rachel Brian

  3. Division of Computing and Software Systems, University of Washington, Bothell, WA, USA

    Dong Si

  4. Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ningjun Serene Gao & Jamie Jaesook Kim

  5. Department of Economics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Mia Yunqi Wang

  6. Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ziyi Li

  7. Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Douglas Turkington

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  1. Sunny Chieh Cheng
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All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sarah Kopelovich.

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Cheng, S.C., Kopelovich, S., Si, D. et al. Co-Production of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Digital Platform for Families of Individuals Impacted by Psychosis. J. technol. behav. sci. 9, 140–148 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-023-00378-3

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