Designing a therapists specific section of the app by the therapists mental model of emotion and an user centered design model

One aspect of healthy mental behaviour is being able to recognize and describe your emotions. A large part of the population however has trouble with this. To support emotion recognition, the Sense-IT app has been developed for these individuals. The app operates on a smartwatch, which measures heartrate, and an smartphone on which an overview of the heartrate is given. The current study focuses on extending the app to a therapist specific section. This is done by both finding user requirements as well as going into depth on two emotion theories: the basic emotion model and the psychological constructionist model. In total 5 therapists participated, all working at GGNet. Two methods were used, a cognitive task analysis to elicit the mental model on emotion of therapists and a user centered design model to focus on concrete recommendations. For both methods an interview and a literature study were used. The results show the mental model of therapists is more in line with the basic emotion model, which might have implications for the further design of the app. Concrete recommendations were found to draw up a prototype of this specific side of the app. Further research should involve prototyping.