Emma Gliddon | MoodSwings
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This document outlines lessons learned from developing MoodSwings 2.0, an online intervention for bipolar disorder. It recommends having a solid development plan, keeping the intervention simple, budgeting carefully, limiting assessments, clearly defining responsibilities, setting realistic deadlines, shopping around for developers, communicating well with developers, testing thoroughly, and carefully planning recruitment. The most important research findings were about developing effective online interventions, while the most important knowledge exchange learnings involved understanding project management best practices.
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Emma Gliddon | MoodSwings
- 1. MoodSwings 2.0: Lessons Learned Developing an Online Intervention for Bipolar Disorder Emma Gliddon Deakin University - IMPACT SRC Australia
- 3. 1. Have a solid plan
- 4. 2. Keep it simple
- 6. 4. Limit your assessments
- 7. 5. Check your responsibilities
- 8. 6. Set realistic deadlines
- 10. 8. Communicate with your developers
- 11. 9. Speak up
- 13. 11. Have everything tested
- 14. 12. Keep records
- 15. 13. Plan your recruitment
- 16. Key findings 1. In terms of research, what are the most important findings from this project? 2. In terms of KE, what are the most important learnings to share with CREST.BD network members?
Editor's Notes
- My name is Emma Gliddon and I’m a PhD student from Deakin University in Australia. I’m working with Michael and Lesley Berk, as well as Sue Lauder on the MoodSwings online intervention for bipolar disorder.
- I’ve been working on this program since 2009. The current version of the program is known as MoodSwings 2.0. We began the development of this version in late 2011 and we finally opened the program for recruitment in March of this year. Today I’ll be talking about the lessons learned during this very long and painful development process.
- Lesson 1: Have a solid plan in place before you do anything else. Generate a comprehensive list of requirements and thoroughly plan out what you want. This includes your content, navigation, appearance and any special features that may need to be specifically built.
- Lesson 2: Try to keep your program as simple as possible. Avoid adding too many fancy features that will slow your site down and make it less accessible for novice users. The more complex your program, the more likely you are to experience glitches (and the source will be harder to identify).
- Lesson 3: Budget smart and be realistic about your costs. Developing an online program isn’t going to be cheap, and it’s going to cost more than a standard website. It’s also important to set aside some money for extra additions, because you’re bound to think of something else you’d like to add or change after development has started.
- Lesson 4: Limit the amount of assessments you use. Your participants need to stay motivated, so be aware of your assessment burden. Stick to short questionnaires and make sure they’re easy to understand. It doesn’t take much for someone to close your site and not come back!
- Lesson 5: Find out what legal and ethical responsibilities you have and how they will impact your program. I’m not sure what the case is here in Canada, but in the United States there are a number of strict privacy rules to ensure your site is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). As an NIH funded study, the MoodSwings program also has strict requirements for monitoring participant safety through a red flag assessment system.
- Lesson 6: Set realistic deadlines. This was another big one for us. MoodSwings went to tender in November 2011, but the site wasn’t officially launched until March 2014! Make sure you allocate enough time for planning, development, testing, further development, re-testing and launch. Be prepared for the unexpected because things WILL go wrong.
- Lesson 7: Once you have a solid plan and deadline targets, shop around for a good developer. Make sure they clearly understand what you want, and make sure they’re appropriately qualified/experienced to deliver it. Developers offering you a cheap deal very possibly do not understand the complexity of what you want. Also be aware of developers who will over charge for simple tasks. If you can, have someone with the appropriate expertise look over any quotes. Have them explain to you what they think you want.
- Lesson 8: Communicate with your developers. Go through your plan thoroughly with them and make sure your expectations are reasonable. Maintain an ongoing dialogue to make sure you’re all on the same page. Convert your plan into a set of deliverables and send it to your developers. Have them agree to each item and the associated deadline. Make sure the scope of the project is clearly defined. The phrase “out of scope” will start to wear you down if you hear it too many times! (the extra money set aside in your budget can help to cover “out of scope” tasks if they’re essential)
- Lesson 9: If something isn’t quite working how you want it to, speak up early while there’s still time to fix it.
- Lesson 10: Test everything you can possibly think of. Go through every detail yourself and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed. This process is known as alpha testing.
- Lesson 11: Have everything tested by other people. Have independent testers go through every detail. Unfamiliar users will navigate through your site differently to you, and will likely find problems that you missed. Make sure you pick a diverse group of testers who reflect your target audience. This process is known as beta testing.
- Lesson 12: Keep thorough records of everything. This includes all discussions with your developers (and any verbal agreements made), discussion with your team (so you’re not making the same decisions over and over again), and your procedure (so new team members know what’s going on). This will also help you at the end when you want to publish your methods. Having a clear procedure document means you won’t forget any steps in your write up.
- Lesson 13: Plan your recruitment strategies carefully. Online recruitment is much faster than face-to-face, so you don’t want to get inundated with applicants. It’s also important to take your staffing capacity into consideration if you are administering questionnaires or interviewing potential participants. A good example would be when the International Bipolar Foundation shared the MoodSwings program on their Facebook page, we had over 100 new registrations of interest in around 12 hours!