BEPOLAR: um guia de saúde e bem estar para monitoramento e gerenciamento do transtorno afetivo bipolar

Abstract

Bipolar Affective Disorder, or Bipolar Disorder (BD), is characterized by alternating episodes of mania and hypomania, making family support essential for maintaining treatment and psychosocial care for people with BD. Although there are solutions that use mobile applications to monitor people with BAD, none were found that included/integrated the family as a support network in this process. This study aimed to design BePolar, a health and well-being guide for monitoring bipolar disorder, based on a passive data collection by users with BD and awareness of their support network about the disorder. We adopted the methodology of Garrett's five plans, which advocates the creation of user-centered products. The theoretical research was carried out on BD and the role of the family in maintaining the treatment and quality of life of these people, resulting in the construction of a high-fidelity navigable prototype. The evaluation of the system was carried out in two stages: evaluation by inspection, involving three evaluators, to identify usability problems in the interface; and usability testing, involving three users, people diagnosed with BAD, and members of the support network. The evaluation with users showed the solution’s potential for monitoring the TAB and the importance of the proposal to integrate the support network into the solution.