Postpartum Mood Disorder AI Chatbot

Postpartum Mood Disorders affect millions of parents annually, impacting not only their lives, but those of their children, friends, and family. Through organizations like PSI (Postpartum Support International), parents have found relief through community, text-based PSI Helpline service, online support groups, and other services. The chatbot will learn from the experiences of real parents, clinicians, volunteers, and PSI staff in order to assist more parents suffering postpartum effects than ever before. This project seeks to understand the issues that are most relevant to the design of the chatbot from the perspective of PSI, as well as the Daily Activity Lab in the UT Psychology Department, as opposed to the other, related projects seeking to understand the issues from the perspective of potential parent-users. The chatbot will only succeed with a thorough understanding of the problem-space inherent in designing a chatbot for such sensitive issues as pregnancy and mental health. To that end, this project will establish a firm foundation, using such elements of the UX toolkit as user research and interviewing, design-focused thinking, and prototyping.