Pervasive Therapy: Designing Conversation-Based Interfaces for Ecological Momentary Intervention

The unmet need for mental health treatment has motivated considerable research on the design and evaluation of pervasive technology to support people’s mental health. An enduring idea is the use of conversation-based interfaces to deliver mental health support, which is now a realistic prospect given their widespread use in consumer devices. The ubiquity and varied characteristics of these devices could create a reality where mental health support is only an utterance away, enabling the delivery of ecological momentary interventions—in the moment mental health support in natural settings. We term these systems “pervasive therapy” and in this article consider their future and the open challenges of designing them. Our discussion considers major research directions for their design including intervention and conversation planning, context-aware conversation-based interactions, and the involvement of clinicians. Throughout this article we focus on what a realistic vision is for the near future of pervasive therapy.