SecondLook: Participatory Design Process to Create a Phone App that Detects Digital Dating Abuse

Digital dating abuse is carried out using text messages, emails and social media sites and has become a major mental health crisis among the college-going population. Existing technology and non-technology based intervention programs do not provide assistance at the onset of abuse. The goal of our project is to create a mobile phone application that can detect digital dating abuse. To create the user-interface of this application, we are using a participatory design process. This paper describes the first two phases of this process. Focus group sessions were conducted to understand user requirements and generate hand drawn images to get users' visions of the application. Themes generated using thematic analysis concluded that the users wanted an application with an educational component, supported by a detection tool and a resource locator. A digital mockup of the phone app, with the themes generated and images drawn out by the participants, was then created.