STHW 2013 - International Workshop on Social technologies for health and wellbeing

Technologies for health and well-being
New information and communication technologies have the potential to improve health outcomes for a broad range of people (see 'Potential Benefits' section below). The design of technology to support health and wellbeing has become a major focus for HCI. Recently health became a featured community at CHI, and a new CRC for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing began operation in Australia. This workshop will focus on technologies for health that afford social interaction. For brevity we are calling these 'social therapies'.
Social therapy
Social or 'web 2.0' technologies include blogs, wikis, content-sharing sites, virtual worlds and social networking sites (Gold et al., 2012). Social technologies for health have existed for some time in the form of discussion forums for particular conditions (Maloney-Krichmar and Preece, 2005). Recent developments stem from the appearance of technologies like mobile Internet-enabled platforms and social networking sites. One example is the Horyzons project, conducted by the University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health, which is designing and evaluating online social therapies for youth mental health (Alvarez-Jimenez et al., 2013). Other local projects involve social technologies for people who are attempting to quit smoking (Ploderer et al., 2012), children undergoing long-term hospitalization (Vetere et al., 2012), and elderly people isolated from family (Vetere et al., 2009).
Potential benefits of social therapy
While the popularity of social media has made them attractive in a range of contexts, there are a number of specific advantages that might accrue when they are used to support health (Merolli et al., 2013). Mediated interaction with health workers can be convenient for patients who are busy, distant from health services, or trying to re-engage with normal activities (Beattie et al., 2009). Social therapy might improve connectedness for people who are socially isolated because of a health condition (Vetere et al., 2012), given that disconnection contributes to negative health outcomes (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Social media influence the behaviour of users and could be used to promote healthier behaviour (Morris et al., 2011). Sharing experiences can be therapeutic (Pennebaker and Seagal, 1999) and in the context of a social medium can generate useful advice for other users (Ploderer et al., 2013). Social interaction can increase motivation to keep using a therapy over time, which might address the high dropout rates that have plagued some online therapies (Christensen et al., 2009). Since HCI researchers are already addressing social media, they are well placed to inform the design and evaluation of social therapies.
Challenges for design of social therapy
However there are challenges to implementing social therapies. Traditional user-centred design methods can raise practical and ethical difficulties in the health context (Doherty et al., 2010). Users may be unwilling to discuss health problems on social media (Morris et al., 2011). Designers must balance the need to make profile and usage data visible with the need for privacy (Purpura et al., 2011), and must decide whether to leverage existing social media or create new â?œwalled gardensâ?? (Newman et al., 2011). While online connections can complement and enhance existing relationships, there is the risk of diminishing them (Turkle, 2012). When content is contributed by users it is difficult to be certain that the technology will â?œfirst, do no harmâ?? (Webb et al., 2008).
Goals of this workshop
This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on social health interventions, to share experiences and discuss concepts, common problems and possible solutions. Our goals are to advance the field of social therapy, address the challenges we face, and define problem areas for future work. Another important goal is to build community among researchers working on these issues in Australasia.
Participants working on technologies for behaviour change are also invited to submit work to a forthcoming special issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing on 'Social Interaction and Reflection for Behaviour Change' at http://pucbehaviourchange.wordpress.com. (This is due October 2013, which unfortunately is before OzChi.)
Topics of interest
Technologies discussed at the workshop might include systems that support sufferers of specific conditions, or promote health-related behaviour change, or support social inclusion for patients undergoing treatment.
We invite participants to contribute position papers on topics that include but are not limited to:
User-centred and participatory design of social therapy
Evaluation criteria for social therapies
Usability of social therapy
User experience of social therapy
Accessibility and needs of specific user groups
Privacy, security and safety in social therapy
Implementation issues
Participate
If you would like to participate in the workshop, please submit your position paper (2-4 pages, OzChi format) to our EasyChair site by 11th October 2013. News and updates will be displayed here. We look forward to seeing you in November!
References
Alvarez-Jimenez, M., S. Bendall, R. Lederman, G. Wadley, G. Chinnery, S. Vargas, M. Larkin, E. Killackey, P. McGorry and J. Gleeson (2013) On the HORYZON: moderated online social therapy for long-term recovery in first episode psychosis. Schizophrenia Research 143(1): 143-149.
Beattie, A., A. Shaw, S. Kaur and D. Kessler (2009) Primaryâ??care patientsâ?™ expectations and experiences of online cognitive behavioural therapy for depression: a qualitative study. Health Expectations 12(1): 45-59.
Christensen, H., K. M. Griffiths and L. Farrer (2009) Adherence in Internet interventions for anxiety and depression: Systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 11(2).
Doherty, G., D. Coyle and M. Matthews (2010) Design and evaluation guidelines for mental health technologies. Interacting with Computers 22(4): 243-252.
Gold, J., A. E. Pedrana, M. A. Stoove, S. Chang, S. Howard, J. Asselin, O. Ilic, C. Batrouney and M. E. Hellard (2012) Developing health promotion interventions on social networking sites: recommendations from The FaceSpace Project. Journal of medical Internet research 14(1).
Holt-Lunstad, J., T. B. Smith and J. B. Layton (2010) Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine 7(7): e1000316.
Maloney-Krichmar, D. and J. Preece (2005) A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 12(2): 201-232.
Merolli, M., K. Gray and F. Martin-Sanchez (2013) Health outcomes and related effects of using social media in chronic disease management: A literature review and analysis of affordances. Journal of Biomedical Informatics(0).
Morris, M. E., S. Consolvo, S. Munson, K. Patrick, J. Tsai and A. D. Kramer (2011). Facebook for health: opportunities and challenges for driving behavior change. Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.
Newman, M. W., D. Lauterbach, S. A. Munson, P. Resnick and M. E. Morris (2011). It's not that I don't have problems, I'm just not putting them on Facebook: challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health. Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, ACM.
Pennebaker, J. W. and J. D. Seagal (1999) Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of clinical psychology 55(10): 1243-1254.
Ploderer, B., W. Smith, S. Howard, J. Pearce and R. Borland (2012). Things you don't want to know about yourself: ambivalence about tracking and sharing personal information for behaviour change. Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, ACM.
Ploderer, B., W. Smith, S. Howard and J. B. Pearce, R (2013). Patterns of support in an online community for smoking cessation. Proceedings of the Conference on Communities and Technologies.
Purpura, S., V. Schwanda, K. Williams, W. Stubler and P. Sengers (2011). Fit4life: the design of a persuasive technology promoting healthy behavior and ideal weight. Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM.
Vetere, F., H. Davis, M. Gibbs and S. Howard (2009) The Magic Box and Collage: Responding to the challenge of distributed intergenerational play. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 67(2): 165-178.
Vetere, F., J. Green, A. Nisselle, X. Thu Dang, T. Zazryn and P. Peng Deng (2012) Inclusion during school absence: Using ambient technology to create a classroom presence for hospitalised children. Telecommunications Journal of Australia 62(5).
Webb, M., J. Burns and P. Collin (2008) Providing online support for young people with mental health difficulties: challenges and opportunities explored. Early Intervention in Psychiatry 2(2): 108-113.