Acquired brain injuries (ABI) affect approximately 32,000 people in New Zealand each year. Many individuals with ABI live with ongoing difficulties in their daily lives for months or years following their injury, and some never fully recover. Improving social functioning by training the skills needed for success in social interactions is an important although often underrepresented part, of rehabilitation after ABI.

Those who lack social functioning abilities are at risk of becoming socially isolated and typically have high levels of depression and anxiety. Therapy for social functioning after an ABI is limited, with opportunities for practise decreasing as individuals return home from in-patient care facilities, and training for social functioning being proportionally less focused on than cognitive or physical functioning.

Current rehabilitation practises concerning social functioning offer individuals one-on-one sessions with health professionals and group therapy sessions, where individuals are assessed, rehabilitation plans are established and social skill related tasks are set and practised. Opportunities for individuals to receive this type of therapy beyond in-patient care and opportunities for self-practise are limited.

Interactive technology could offer unchartered opportunities for administering parts of this training in an efficient way. The scientific literature describes several successful research studies that evaluated rehabilitation of ABI using interactive technology. However, these studies are generally focussed on the rehabilitation of cognitive and physical functioning rather than the skills needed for social functioning.

The research presented in this thesis follows the design of an interactive tool for rehabilitating social functioning in individuals with ABI. It focuses on background research, the user-centred design and creation of a design prototype, and a preliminary validation of the prototype. A systematic literature review of related work was carried out and background research was analysed. The findings from best practise recommendations, scientific literature and primary data from interviews that were conducted with domain experts were also analysed. Based on these collected and analysed data, design requirements, design constraints and essential features were identified and a concept prototype was created.

The prototype of the concept, SocialMe, is an app that is designed to be accessed via tablet or smartphone (personal mobile device) platforms. SocialMe prompts self-reflection of the skills used for social interactions with the aim of improving self-awareness of deficits that affect these social skills and creating an opportunity to reflect on how one can improve and make positive change regarding them. The prototype was preliminarily validated in semi-structured interviews with domain experts and former patients of ABI, which included general feedback as well as perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use questionnaires.

The results of the preliminary validation interviews indicated the considerable potential of the SocialMe intervention to be a useful tool for patients after an ABI. Feedback of the concept was very positive, with ratings of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use questionnaires well above the neutral midpoint, suggesting participants found that SocialMe has the potential to be both useful and easy to use.

The findings of this research contribute to the area of rehabilitation of social functioning following ABI and the use of technology-based interventions. The empirically researched design requirements for mobile tools for patients after ABI presented in this thesis could be a starting point for other technology-based interventions being designed for individuals with ABI. The design concept SocialMe may also have the potential to be used by people other than individuals with ABI for the purpose of supporting skills needed for full social functioning. Future research will need to be carried out to develop the concept further and evaluate its clinical significance in a randomised controlled trial to see if the use of SocialMe can lead to improvements in the social skills needed for social functioning, and to support the social reintegration of individuals with ABI.