JAIST Repository
https://dspace.jaist.ac.jp/Title

糖尿病患者ピアサポートサービス設計のための心理変
容機能の表現に関する研究

Author(s)大澤, 郁恵CitationIssue Date

2017‑03

TypeThesis or Dissertation

Text version

noneURL

http://hdl.handle.net/10119/14238

RightsDescription

Supervisor:池田満, 知識科学研究科, 博士

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Abstract
Services are required to meet diverse needs in rapidly changing market conditions. The same
issue occurs on peer support services for diabetic patients. The peer support services among diabetic
patients have functions of improving their psychological aspects. Psychological concerns, burdens and theother psychological problems often prevent the diabetic patients from carrying out their diabetic selfmanagement for keeping their blood sugar level. One of the problems of the existing peer support services
is that the services don’t suit enough to patients’ various lifestyles, individual values, social needs andthe others which change by time. The focus of discussion is how to tailor services to such variousconditions and environments. The standardized psychological functions are already proposed in order toadaptively design the contents of the services. On the other hand, it is also important to understand thedifferent types of psychological functions which can be applied to diverse types of patients and variouscontexts.
The question is how to reveal the various psychological functions. One of the approaches is anincremental approach by improving psychological functions with practice through collaborations withpatients and medical professionals. The steps of the incremental approach are assuming the typicalpsychological functions, designing services of the peer support services, observing the services andrevising the assumed psychological functions. The issue of the approach is that the psychologicalfunctions are too abstract to share and represent the psychological functions. This ambiguity of thepsychological functions results in the inconsistency of the incremental processes. Same understanding ofsuch invisible functions is not able to be built among designers. Accordingly, it failed to discuss and revise
the idea of psychological functions without even notice. Since the concepts of the psychological functions
depend on the person, the written psychological functions are not always understood in a same way. A
method of the representation is required for a clearer representation of the psychological functions. Oneof the reasons why the psychological functions have remained unclear is that the concepts of thepsychological supports are not well defined. Therefore, the conceptual definition of the psychologicalfunctions is necessary to represent the psychological functions.
The purpose of this research is to define the concepts of the psychological functions and verify
how the definition contributes to the incremental design process of revising the psychological functions
with practice. Ontology is adapted to define the concepts of the psychological functions. An issue ofdefining concepts is that there is almost neither a single model of the concepts everyone agrees with, nor
obvious criteria to define the concepts of the psychological functions. The theory and the method ofconceptual definitions are discussed in ontology engineering. The concepts of the service functions areproposed based on the theory. The design process is divided into four steps; modeling psychologicalfunctions based on previous research, designing the services, offering the services, and evaluating andaccumulating the opinions. In this research, online peer support services are designed, and the defined
psychological functions are adapted to the four steps.
As the result, the contributions of the definition of the psychological function to the process ofrevising psychological functions are confirmed. (1) The contribution on modeling psychological functions
is that the conceptual definitions show the viewpoints to see psychological functions and that theviewpoints clarify what the each previous finding mentions. The clarification enables unifiedcomprehension of the psychological functions based on various findings concerning psychologicalfunctions. (2) The contributions on designing services are 3: expressing implicit purposes of the online
systems of the peer support services, representing reasons why the systems are changed, and keeping theconsistency of the design of the functions. (3) The contributions on offering the services are 2: The firstcontribution is improving accuracy of sharing psychological functions with users. The definitions of thepsychological functions play the role of checking items of consistency between the psychological functions
and explanations of the psychological functions. The second contribution is making sure whether thepsychological functions have correctly been understood by patients or not. (4) The contributions on
evaluating and accumulating the opinions are 5: discriminating adequate opinions from opinions which
are inconsistent with the constructed functions, differentiating between discussions on psychologicaleffect and discussions on actions to cause the psychological effects, representing and recording the detailof targeting patients that psychological functions are supposed to be adapted to, evaluating andexpressing intended communication among patients, and distinguishing the opinions on the psychologicalsupports themselves from opinions on the way to promote the support. In conclusion, these results suggestthat the conceptual definition contributes to the process of revising psychological functions of the peer
support services for diabetic patients.
Keywords: Service design, Psychological support, Peer support, Diabetic self-management, Ontology.