Human Centered Development of a Web-based Intervention for the Prevention of Depression

Web-based preventive interventions have shown to be effective for the prevention of depression, but high rates of non-use and drop-out, less than optimal implementation in the care organization and low acceptance rates cause interventions to be less effective in practice than in theory and research. The lack of a holistic overview where the human and technological context is given a prominent place, seems to be one of the main reasons for this less than optimal effectiveness. This study employs methods based on the holistic approach of the CeHRes roadmap to create a viable web-based intervention and to investigate the suitability of the chosen methods and the pitfalls that can be encountered. The study shows that it is possible to create a viable web-based intervention by including different stakeholders (users, designers, programmers, researchers) in different phases of the development process. The employed methods are suitable and yield complementary results, but made our approach more user and expert driven than fully stakeholder driven. Furthermore, our project team was organized with the researcher as the central hub. Although this worked well most of the time, we propose a more ideal organizational structure in which a formal project leader, who can be a researcher, has a mandate to make decisions and resources to be involved in all steps of the process