Exploring challenges and design opportunities for digital mental well-being support in Saudi Arabia

Thesis

Saudi women are experiencing growing mental well-being challenges, often concealed by social barriers and stigma that discourage help-seeking. While digital support holds promise for circumventing such obstacles, its application within Saudi Arabia remains underexplored, especially in addressing Saudi users’ unique cultural and religious needs. This DPhil research investigates the use of mobile mental well-being apps in Saudi Arabia, with a focus on identifying opportunities and barriers that affect their adoption and engagement. The aim is to inform the design of digital mental well-being technologies tailored to the needs of Saudi users, with a particular focus on young Saudi women, who represent a key user group for these technologies.

The research comprises four empirical investigations. First, we conducted a systematic app review and content analysis of Arabic mental well-being apps available in the Saudi iOS and Android app stores. The analysis examined app features, engagement strategies, and the types of mental well-being support provided. Second, we conducted interviews with young Saudi women to examine their perceptions and experiences with mental well-being apps and to understand how cultural, religious, and social factors affect their engagement with mental well-being apps. Third, we ran a series of co-design workshops with young Saudi women to elicit their design preferences and requirements for mental well-being apps. This resulted in five empirically and theoretically grounded design recommendations to address identified challenges and improve the future design of well-being apps in the Saudi context. In the fourth and final study, building on the findings from the earlier studies, we incorporated our proposed design recommendations into an LLM-based technology probe to examine their acceptability, with a particular focus on cultural alignment. We then evaluated this prototype through user interviews with a group from the target population to assess its relevance and acceptability. This study also contributes to emerging research on LLMs by exploring the cultural sensitivity of LLMs and examining whether empirically informed prompts can enhance cultural alignment.

The findings of this thesis contribute to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and digital mental well-being support by informing the future design of technologies for young Saudi women, and the broader population of Muslim Arab women.

Authors: Aldaweesh, SA

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-0opd1qnmm
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: LLMs; Human-Centred AI (HCAI); generative AI; AI chatbots; emotional support; cultural sensitivity; mHealth; mental well-being; cultural alignment; mobile apps
• Subjects: Computer Science; Human Centred Computing