Peer-reviewed article
Practitioner review: Co‐design of digital mental health technologies with children and young people
Rhys Bevan Jones, Paul N. Stallard, Sharifah Shameem Agha, Simon Rice, Aliza Werner‐Seidler et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This review examines how digital mental health technologies can be better designed by involving children and young people from the start. The authors identified 25 studies and 30 technologies that were co-designed with young people and found that involving users throughout development improves engagement and uptake. The review highlights key principles, methods and challenges for co-designing mental health apps and tools with children. The work shows that traditional top-down approaches are less effective than collaborative design that includes young people as active participants.
Key points
- Co-design involves all relevant stakeholders throughout the entire life and research cycle of digital health programmes
- Early user input in development, evaluation and implementation helps ensure technologies are engaging, feasible, acceptable and potentially effective
- 25 original articles and 30 digital mental health technologies were identified that were designed or developed with children and young people
- Key themes include principles of co-design, methods of involving users, prototype design, and challenges of the co-design process
- There is a lack of literature to inform co-design of digital technologies for child and adolescent mental health prior to this review
Limitations
This is a literature review and does not provide evidence of whether co-designed technologies actually improve mental health outcomes compared to traditionally designed ones. The review does not measure the impact of co-design on the effectiveness of the technologies themselves.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in digital technologies to help improve children and young people's mental health, and the evidence for the effectiveness for these approaches is rising. However, there is concern regarding levels of user engagement, uptake and adherence. Key guidance regarding digital health interventions stress the importance of early user input in the development, evaluation and implementation of technologies to help ensure they are engaging, feasible, acceptable and potentially effective. Co-design is a process of active involvement of stakeholders, requiring a change from the traditional approaches to intervention development. However, there is a lack of literature to inform the co-design of digital technologies to help child and adolescent mental health. METHODS: We reviewed the literature and practice in the co-design of digital mental health technologies with children and young people. We searched Medline, PsycInfo and Web of Science databases, guidelines, reviews and reference lists, contacted key authors for relevant studies, and extracted key themes on aspects of co-design relevant to practice. We supplemented this with case studies and methods reported by researchers working in the field. RESULTS: We identified 25 original articles and 30 digital mental health technologies that were designed/developed with children and young people. The themes identified were as follows: principles of co-design (including potential stakeholders and stages of involvement), methods of involving and engaging the range of users, co-designing the prototype and the challenges of co-design. CONCLUSIONS: Co-design involves all relevant stakeholders throughout the life and research cycle of the programme. This review helps to inform practitioners and researchers interested in the development of digital health technologies for children and young people. Future work in this field will need to consider the changing face of technology, methods of engaging with the diversity in the user group, and the evaluation of the co-design process and its impact on the technology.