Designing daybuilder: an experimental app to support people with depression

Daybuilder is an experimental smartphone app intended to support people with depression. It was designed in collaboration with six participants who had all received antidepressant medication within the last two years. The Daybuilder prototype was field tested with the same six participants for three to four weeks. All participants were interested in using an application like Daybuilder, immediately or in the future if they were to suffer from depression again. The study has shown it possible to design a smartphone app that people with depression find interesting and potentially supportive in their daily lives and in their clinical treatment. In this project we chose to work directly with the depressive people, without involving clinicians, in an effort to get as close as possible to the participants' needs and concerns. This approach caused certain difficulties in recruitment, required adaptation of design activities, and consideration of certain ethical issues. The seriousness and prevalence of depression in society make it urgent as a next step to do a comprehensive study to clarify possible clinical effects of using smartphone apps for this special user group.