Investigating the Role of Context in the Delivery of Text Messages for Supporting Psychological Wellbeing

Abstract

Without a nuanced understanding of users' perspectives and contexts, text messaging tools for supporting psychological wellbeing risk delivering interventions that are mismatched to users' dynamic needs. We investigated the contextual factors that influence young adults' day-to-day experiences when interacting with such tools. Through interviews and focus group discussions with 36 participants, we identified that people's daily schedules and affective states were dominant factors that shape their messaging preferences. We developed two messaging dialogues centered around these factors, which we deployed to 42 participants to test and extend our initial understanding of users' needs. Across both studies, participants provided diverse opinions of how they could be best supported by messages, particularly around when to engage users in more passive versus active ways. They also proposed ways of adjusting message length and content during periods of low mood. Our findings provide design implications and opportunities for context-aware mental health management systems.

Keywords: JITAI; contextual factors; daily schedule; energy; mental wellbeing; mood; text messages.

Figure 1:

Example conversations in the morning and late afternoon within the daily schedule dialogue.

Figure 2:

An illustration of the circumplex model [108], which defines emotions along on two dimensions: mood (valence) and energy (arousal).

Figure 3:

Two example conversations under the affective state dialogue: (a) a conversation involving passive support reception, and (b) a conversation involving active writing.