Author(s): Pereira, Ricardo José Guerreiro
Date: 2011
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/13924
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): Mobile Computing; Collaborative Work; Georeferencing; User-centered Design; Evaluation; Psychotherapy
People often feel uncomfortable in common social settings, sometimes to the point of damaging their lives. Though this type of problem affects all ages, genders and cultures, it is more visible in children. When confronted with this type of problem, children and adolescents are generally accompanied by therapists, while participating in Social Competence Training (SCT). SCT is a type of psychotherapeutic procedure in which patients must perform a set of tasks individually or in groups. The patient‟s activities outside the therapist‟s office have an important function in this type of therapy. However, therapists have no control over this process, which is supported only through questionnaires on paper, which patients must answer after completing the tasks, for discussion during the therapy session. With this intermittent level of therapist control, many times patients quit therapy or produce false data and answers. This is due to extremely low motivation when away from the therapist's office or parental control. Factors such as patient monitoring, promoting collaborative efforts and encouraging positive attitudes can improve the therapy process, and its results. Therefore, the need to conduct sessions outside the office, with the therapist, becomes apparent. This project aims to replace traditional questionnaires on paper with a mobile device, which would fully integrate the therapist in the SCT process, even outside the office. Therefore, it presents software, based on mobile devices, that supports in-sithu georeferenced group therapy which, besides having real-time monitoring and intervention capabilities, also allows for multi modal data gathering by the patients themselves. The concept, system and functions are defined, and directions for future work are discussed.
