One of the hardest challenges psychological clinics face is determining the effectiveness of their interventions. This makes being creative and trying new solutions a difficult prospect. Working with Proffesor John Weisz and the Judge Baker Children's Center, I have provided technical solutions to their new endeavor. The group hopes to have parents fill out surveys weekly reporting how their symptoms are doing.
While the concept is extremely simple, the challenge is to motivate busy parents to fill out the information. I am supposed to enter my workout minutes each day and I hardly ever do that. How can we motivate parents to do this? Using principles of Motivating Technologies by BJ Fogg, I hope to introduce new ways to motivate parents. Simple solutions could involve having a picture that grows and changes each time a survey is filled out. You can also compare a user's input to the average.
Unlike traditional engineering though, I hope to find solutions by working with parents who do struggle. I know what motivates me but finding out what motivates them is my end goal! By developing the solution off of real needs (instead of theoretical needs), I hope to find an effective solution to this basic problem.