Considerations on User Needs for the Internet

This paper reports on a project on a mental health service offered on the web for young people, who have drug problems, especially with ecstasy. The service is offered by the Medical University of Luebeck and was developed in interdisciplinary co-operation between medicine, computer science and design. The focus of the project was on meeting user-specific needs: providing information and help for young people and for their peer-groups. A pre-condition for success is to design the medium according to the user needs, which means an adequate use of the medium. We provide some usage data, which reveal a need for that kind of web service. Compared with other psychotherapeutic counseling-services which are common in the USA for several years and which increase in Europe as well, there are some main differences. The e-mail and counseling service is for free although it is provided by a professional psychotherapist. He is an expert in the subject area of ecstasy addiction and works also with young drug addicts in drug clinics. The work is based on strict confidentiality as it is given in consultations outside the web. Furthermore, the project applies technology enabling anonymous and unobservable internet use. The authors argue that counseling on the web is a kind of communication which needs adequate technologies for anonymous transfer of data in order to protect privacy for the information seeking communication partner. However, there is a discrepancy between the requirements put forward by communication needs of users and the public discussion on prohibiting anonymity. Furthermore, from a perspective of media theory, anonymity in this context opens new perspectives on innovative use of the new medium.