Designing Mobile Persuasive Technology to Promote Mental Healthcare in Developing African Nations
Makuochi Nkwo · 2019 · Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/3315002.3332433
Summary
This doctoral consortium paper explores how mobile persuasive technology can be designed to promote positive mental healthcare behaviors in developing African nations, with Nigeria as the primary focus. The author identifies a critical gap: while mobile technologies incorporating persuasive techniques (such as reduction, personalization, reminders, and social learning) have been successfully applied in domains like e-commerce and environmental behavior, there is very little research on their application to mental health in developing countries. Mental health services in these contexts face significant barriers including high costs of diagnosis and treatment, limited access to healthcare providers, and social stigma that prevents people from seeking help. The research uses a methodological triangulation approach combining survey methods, object-oriented analysis and design methodology, and the Persuasive System Design (PSD) model developed by Oinas-Kukkonen. As an initial step, a user study was conducted with 120 people in an African community using a validated 4-point Likert scale questionnaire to understand what strategies could support positive mental health behaviors. The findings from this survey inform the design of a mobile application that will incorporate identified persuasive techniques to encourage mental health-seeking behavior.
Key findings
The survey of 120 community members identified several social strategies that respondents agreed could support people with mental health disorders to adopt positive behaviors. These included: provision of personal health guides, regular reminders for mental health checkups, and opportunities for people to share and learn pro-mental health behaviors from others. The author mapped these community-identified strategies to established persuasive technology techniques from the PSD model: reduction (simplifying complex health information), personalization (tailoring content to individual needs), reminders (prompting regular health actions), social learning (allowing users to observe and learn from others' health behaviors), and cooperation (enabling mutual support). At the time of writing, the mobile health technology was in the low-fidelity prototype design stage, iterating based on the study findings. The research had not yet reached the evaluation stage where the effectiveness of the designed system would be tested with users.
Relevance
This research addresses an important intersection of accessibility and digital health: ensuring that mental health support technologies are designed with and for communities in developing nations rather than simply exported from Western contexts. The emphasis on conducting community-based research to identify culturally appropriate strategies before designing the technology reflects good participatory design practice. For accessibility practitioners, the work highlights how personalization and tailoring — core concepts in accessible design — apply not just to accommodating disabilities but to making health technologies effective across diverse cultural and socioeconomic contexts. The focus on mobile technology is particularly relevant given that in many African nations, smartphones are the primary or only means of internet access, making mobile-first design essential for digital inclusion. While the paper presents early-stage research, it raises important questions about how persuasive design techniques should be adapted for mental health contexts where users may be vulnerable, and how technology can bridge gaps in healthcare access in resource-constrained settings.
Tags: mental health · mobile health · persuasive technology · developing nations · Africa · behavior change · personalization · social influence · accessibility