Abstract

Mental health issues are on the rise, and more healthcare resources are needed to address existing needs. The digitalization of mental health care can enable easier access to much-needed treatment. Still, little is known about how to successfully design digitalized health care, especially from a human–computer interaction perspective, even though digital mental healthcare options are currently available for healthcare seekers. The purpose of this article is to explore how currently available digital care apps are designed, outline design strategies used, and identify opportunities for improvement. In this article, we use design patterns from five digital healthcare center mobile applications in a design critique approach to explore digitalized self-triage journeys that are available to users in Sweden. We showcase the diverse design solutions through pre-patterns identified from digitalized self-triage steps of prelogin, selecting your health issue, answering questions, and filing a case. We then discuss identified design challenges in relation to (1) calibrating appropriate expectations, (2) health literacy requirements, (3) transparency of information, and (4) expected risk-taking behaviors. We end with implications for future design-oriented research to complement clinical, financial, and technological perspectives on digital mental healthcare centers and implications that can improve the design of digital self-triage for mental health applications.