BackgroundThe use of Web-based interventions to deliver mental health and behavior change programs is increasingly popular. They are cost-effective, accessible, and generally effective. Often these interventions concern psychologically sensitive and challenging issues, such as depression or anxiety. The process by which a person receives and experiences therapy is important to understanding therapeutic process and outcomes. While the experience of the patient or client in traditional face-to-face therapy has been evaluated in a number of ways, there appeared to be a gap in the evaluation of patient experiences of therapeutic interventions delivered online. Evaluation of Web-based artifacts has focused either on evaluation of experience from a computer Web-design perspective through usability testing or on evaluation of treatment effectiveness. Neither of these methods focuses on the psychological experience of the person while engaged in the therapeutic process.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate what methods, if any, have been used to evaluate the in situ psychological experience of users of Web-based self-help psychosocial interventions.MethodsA systematic literature review was undertaken of interdisciplinary databases with a focus on health and computer sciences. Studies that met a predetermined search protocol were included.ResultsAmong 21 studies identified that examined psychological experience of the user, only 1 study collected user experience in situ. The most common method of understanding users’ experience was through semistructured interviews conducted posttreatment or questionnaires administrated at the end of an intervention session. The questionnaires were usually based on standardized tools used to assess user experience with traditional face-to-face treatment.ConclusionsThere is a lack of methods specified in the literature to evaluate the interface between Web-based mental health or behavior change artifacts and users. Main limitations in the research were the nascency of the topic and cross-disciplinary nature of the field. There is a need to develop and deliver methods of understanding users’ psychological experiences while using an intervention.

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In this paper, the author is concerned with “stories” society makes about “the machine”. A story that holds consensual elements is of great interest if one accepts the premise that story in itself has a strong influence on what we seek to create. Given that many popular stories present nightmare scenarios, a self-fulfilling prophesy would not want to be created. The psychodramatic method was used to produce several unscripted enactments of people’s feelings, thoughts and experiences concerning the machine. Certain elements of setting, character, metaphor and action were then drawn from the enactments and formed into a story.