During the COVID-19 era, technology-enhanced protection of this disease has saved lives in developed countries in which citizens have the privilege of accessing and using such technologies to fight Coronavirus. In the undeveloped countries, on the other hand, citizens have had no accession or ability to use digital technologies to prevent COVID-19. Having this in front, in the MyShield research project, we aim to address how to teach self-care skills in undeveloped countries in the era of COVID-19 using a mobile low-cost application effectively based on a standard educational model (ADDIE). This paper reports a framework that arises from the results of semi-structured interviews and online workshops conducted in the ADDIE design process for the self-care mobile application. The specialists contributed to indicte the appropriate content for teaching self-care skills while informants contributed to optimize the user experience flow.
Background
Individuals, organizations and society were all affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased the level of death anxiety among people and patients. In cases of anxiety disorders such as death anxiety, exposure therapy is an effective and basic treatment method for which developing mobile-based applications and contents would help medical practitioners significantly. The current research aimed at reducing the burden of COVID-19 death anxiety by developing a prototype for a proposed mobile application.
Methods
The current article presents findings from an early project stage namely Exposure Therapy in Iran in which multiple interviews were conducted with psychologists for identifying criteria for content production. Afterward, two online workshops were held to develop a prototype for the user interface of the proposed application.
Result
Based on the interviews, contents on subjects like near-death experiences, habit control, death imagery, self-confidence, and anxiety management are the most essential criteria to be included in the mobile application. The online workshops emphasized the ease of use and usefulness of the mobile application. Finally, a prototype was designed as an initial version with the Figma software through high-fidelity technique.
Conclusions
For designing and developing suitable applications to relieve the anxiety caused by COVID-19 death, the identified criteria for content production and the proposed prototype would help software designers to develop related applications in the current challenging time.
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