Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Mobile Technology

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by the presence of persistent and unwanted obsessions, which take the form of intrusive thoughts. These lead to widespread anxiety and/or compulsions which take the form of repetitive acts to relieve anxiety. In 2020, for the author's master's degree final project, she decided to propose the creation of a mobile application for people with OCD, whose main purpose was to reduce the anxiety caused by it. Although mobile applications already exist for the treatment of OCD, it was necessary to fill some gaps and improve them. This chapter will examine the techniques that were applied on the investigation of the author's project—a competitor analysis and an exploratory qualitative research—and understand how they can help to retain some information that is beyond the literature review, and what needs to be retained from them to know which features and functionalities are most useful in an app that aims to support therapeutic intervention in individuals with OCD, as well as possible gaps that could be improved.