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Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 25, 2026
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Psychosocial therapies play a crucial role in effectively treating anxiety and depression. An integral aspect of these therapies involves setting goals that clients engage in outside therapy, known as therapy homework or between-session goals. Yet, clients overwhelmingly do not complete between-session goals. This study explores mental health therapists' and clients' challenges in collaborating to set and manage engagement with between-session goals and discusses how technology could better support them. We interviewed 13 therapists and 14 clients about their experiences with between-session goals. We identified therapists' needs for information to support their clients, challenges in collaboration, and how technology can support client-therapist collaboration. Therapists need in-the-moment information about clients' engagement with goals to inform their decision-making. Clients may feel reluctant to share information due to a lack of trust, embarrassment, or not knowing what to share. Clients could use technology to asynchronously communicate about sensitive topics with their therapists. Technologies could facilitate gathering in-the-moment data that supports client-therapist collaboration on goals.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available November 7, 2025
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Mental health activities conducted by patients between therapy sessions (or "therapy homework") are a component of addressing anxiety and depression. However, to be effective, therapy homework must be tailored to the client’s needs to address the numerous barriers they encounter in everyday life. In this study, we analyze how therapists and clients tailor therapy homework to their client’s needs. We interviewed 13 therapists and 14 clients about their experiences tailoring and engaging in therapy homework. We identify criteria for tailoring homework, such as client skills, discomfort, and external barriers. We present how homework gets adapted, such as through changes in difficulty or by identifying alternatives. We discuss how technologies can better use client information for personalizing mental health interventions, such as adapting to client barriers, adjusting homework to these barriers, and creating a safer environment to support discomfort.more » « less
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Pregnancy brings physical, emotional, and economic challenges for expectant parent(s), close relatives, and friends. Existing technology support, including tracking technology, largely targets pregnant people and ignores other stakeholders. We therefore lack an understanding of how to approach designing collaborative pregnancy tracking technology. To understand how people collaborate around pregnancy tracking and wish to do so, we interviewed 13 pregnant people and 11 non-pregnant stakeholders in the U.S., including partners, friends, and grandparents-to-be. We find that people collaborate for goals like social bonding and jointly managing various pregnancy data. Stakeholders collaborated by either dividing up data types or collectively monitoring the same information. We also identify tensions and challenges, such as pregnant people’s privacy concerns and stakeholders’ varied levels of interest in tracking. In light of socio-cultural norms and stakeholders’ distinctive roles around pregnancy, we point to opportunities for designing collaborative technology that aligns with as well as challenges socio-cultural practices around pregnancy tracking.more » « less
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Pregnancy is a significant but stressful life transition, requiring effort from multiple stakeholders including expectant parents, family members, and friends to navigate. Existing work has primarily focused on understanding and supporting the technology use of pregnant people, neglecting other stakeholders' needs and participation. We therefore consider how pregnancy tracking apps both improve and interfere with the reconfiguration of social relationships caused by pregnancy, drawing on insights from family sociology to examine how these relationships evolve over pregnancy and the transition to parenthood. We reviewed the features of 20 pregnancy tracking apps, and analyzed 4,709 public reviews of them, finding that stakeholders used apps to bond with one another around the excitement of pregnancy, build a prenatal relationship with the fetus, and co-manage pregnancy-related logistical tasks. We find that not accounting for fetal demographics and users' identities, along with socio-cultural norms around gender and parenting roles, often inhibit these collaborative practices. We therefore suggest designing collaborative pregnancy tracking technology that considers both inclusiveness and specificity regarding stakeholders' different roles and relationships to pregnancy.more » « less
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Research at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and health is increasingly done by collaborative cross-disciplinary teams. The need for cross-disciplinary teams arises from the interdisciplinary nature of the work itself—with the need for expertise in a health discipline, experimental design, statistics, and computer science, in addition to HCI. This work can also increase innovation, transfer of knowledge across fields, and have a higher impact on communities. To succeed at a collaborative project, researchers must effectively form and maintain a team that has the right expertise, integrate research perspectives and work practices, align individual and team goals, and secure funding to support the research. However, successfully operating as a team has been challenging for HCI researchers, and can be limited due to a lack of training, shared vocabularies, lack of institutional incentives, support from funding agencies, and more; which significantly inhibits their impact. This workshop aims to draw on the wealth of individual experiences in health project team collaboration across the CHI community and beyond. By bringing together different stakeholders involved in HCI health research, together, we will identify needs experienced during interdisciplinary HCI and health collaborations. We will identify existing practices and success stories for supporting team collaboration and increasing HCI capacity in health research. We aim for participants to leave our workshop with a toolbox of methods to tackle future team challenges, a community of peers who can strive for more effective teamwork, and feeling positioned to make the health impact they wish to see through their work.more » « less
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