# In-Depth Co-Design of Mental Health Monitoring Technologies by People with Lived Experience
## 2 Materials and Methods
### Participants  
To join the consumer and carer advisory group (CCAG), participants submitted an \"expression of interest\" form in which they outlined their motivations, relevant qualifications, and expected contribution to the process of co-designing an automated well-being monitoring service. Since DHRL was developing digital monitoring services for chronic mental health care, the recruitment targeted people with lived experience of a chronic mental illness, as defined by the International Classification of Diseases, or via a Diagnostic Statistical Manual 5 (DSM-5) diagnosis. In other words, people with lived experience of a chronic mental illness that involved the risk of hospitalization and required ongoing medication were prioritized for recruitment to the DHRL consumer and carer advisory panel.  
Applicants' lived experience and current engagement with the mental health system ranged from people within the first five years of treatment to those who had engaged in the mental health system long-term--with two participants reporting 20 years of experience, both caring for a loved one with a mental illness while being a recipient of care themselves. One applicant had undertaken advanced mental health-related studies, while others were serving in public-facing roles in the fields of mental health consumer and carer advocacy.  
The consultation unfolded across ten workshops, with further follow-up reflective discussions regarding the thematic analysis and subsequent writing-up of results, both via facilitated focus groups and also via email. Focus group meeting topics and areas for shared inquiry--as outlined in the Appendix A--were determined by the research teamover the duration of the co-design phase (June 2019-April 2021, with supplemental reviews of summary reports in 2022 and 2023). Each group session lasted roughly two hours. Agendas, minutes, and preparatory readings were sent out in advance of the meeting, with participants encouraged to ask any questions or raise concerns between meetings via phone or email. Finally, since much of the consultation process took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person attendance at focus groups was either optional or, if circumstances required, was entirely replaced by the ready alternative of virtual focus group attendance.  
To ensure that participants were supported throughout the process, an experienced, appropriately registered mental health practitioner co-facilitated these focus groups. This ethical requirement promoted effective wellness monitoring. The mental health facilitator was able to support the welfare of participants and to manage or guide the forum process, with a view to minimizing distress.  
As the consumer and career advisory group became more familiar with the design and functionality of digital health monitoring technologies in collaboration with electronic medical records, they offered deep contextual grounding to researchers working on parallel implementation and development work, enabling them to ideate interaction designs (to enable reciprocal actions and communications) and real-life use cases or applications for the consumer- and career-facing versions of the AI2 and MindTick services.