A Design Thinking Approach for Transnational Adaptation of 2 Mobile Mental Health Apps: Tutorial for Researchers and Practitioners.

Abstract

Digital mental health solutions have great potential to enhance mental health care. However, barriers at the level of users, interventions, and context hinder engagement and uptake. Involving users in the design, adaptation, and implementation process has been put forward as a potential solution; however, instructions and examples on how to do so are limited. One potential framework is design thinking. Although design thinking is a common approach in the business community, its use for guiding development and adaptation processes is not yet a common practice in the context of digital mental health. Unsurprisingly, it is difficult to find concrete instructions on how to do this, even more so in an international context. Therefore, the SUPER (Successful User Participation Examples and Recommendations) project aimed to develop guidelines for entrepreneurs and mental health organizations on how to involve end users and mental health care professionals in the transnational development, implementation, and adaptation of mental health technology. This paper describes the design thinking process that led to those guidelines and how these can be undertaken by researchers, practitioners, or developers in the context of digital mental health. The process is illustrated with 2 adaptations of digital mental health solutions following this approach, executed by the SUPER consortium in the Netherlands and in Denmark. The learnings from these 2 pilots are provided in the form of key considerations and highlights of issues experienced during both design thinking processes. The overall aim is to guide practitioners, developers, and researchers toward better development and international adaptation of digital mental health.