JOINTS Addressing Group Psychotherapy Requirements Luís Duarte, Luís Carriço, Marco de Sá, Diogo Luís LaSIGE & Department of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon Edifício C6 Campo Grande, Lisboa, Portugal {lmc,marcosa}@di.fc.ul.pt, {lduarte,dluis}@lasige.di.fc.ul.pt Keywords: Psychotherapy, CSCW, Mobile Devices, Public Displays Abstract: Providing computational support to group meetings is a challenge some applications are now addressing. Nonetheless, there are specific areas which need special attention by developers to cover all inherent issues, which can reveal themselves as workflow, interface or context requirements, among other. In the group psychotherapy field of study it is necessary to be careful with both the therapist’s and the patient’s work, providing both groups with the necessary mechanisms, interfaces and tools to accomplish their tasks. This poster presents a project whose main goal is to address all this challenges in group psychotherapy sessions. 1 INTRODUCTION Activities which require some collaboration are part of our daily lives. In some cases these can be defined as mere extensions of their individual counterparts However, when we dwell into more specific areas, new challenges can rise which were not foreseen and therefore need to be accounted for (Brignull, 2004). JoinTS (Joint psychological Therapy Support) is a project which addresses the problems and challenges of group psychotherapy. Individual psychotherapy, although less challenging than the group version, already requires different forms of interaction between therapist and patient. The therapy process includes a series of meetings in which both actors exchange information both by conversations and paper artifacts (Mahoney, 2003). As other collaborative activities, group psychotherapy can be defined as an extension of individual therapy, supporting not only all the activities performed on the individual counterpart but also bringing several new issues to the process: an increased number of participants and consequent increased amount of exchanged and processed data; the presence (in some occasions) of a second therapist; the management of different communication channels (therapist-therapist and therapist-patients); easy and quick way to retrieve / distribute data from / to patients. Project JoinTS aims at delivering computational support to all these activities, enhancing the group therapy process and providing therapists with the appropriate tools to perform their tasks. 2 JOINTS The traditional group psychotherapy scenario is characterized for having a therapist (who leads the session), a group of patients and, occasionally, a second therapist (who acts as an observer towards the group). The main therapist conducts the session as a facilitator. The other tasks are also his/hers responsibility, unless a second therapist is present. Communication between both therapists is avoided, in order not to create awkward moments for the patients. Group therapy session occur in a room with the presence of all the participants. Communication is mainly oral, except for artifacts and artifact fulfillment results (written on paper). JoinTS considers this basic scenario and extends into several dimensions, taking advantage of technology. First, incorporating the results from SCOPE (Carriço, 2003), it substitutes paper by