Here are some important facts:
Anxiety and depression are the most common mental disorders in Britain, with 7.8% of people meeting criteria for diagnosis;
More than half of young people link mental illness with alienation and isolation;
For every person affected by mental illness, £8 is spent on research - 22 times less than cancer and 14 times less than dementia.
Antidepressant drug prescriptions rose by 108.5% from 2006 to 2016;
It is estimated that 75% of people with mental health problems in England may not get access to the treatment they need.
Please check mentalhealth.org and mqmentalhealth.org for more information.
In other words...?
These statistics show how little we do for the most vulnerable people in our society. Mental health problems are on the rise, and we can't ignore them any longer. Most of the times, we address the symptoms without understanding the roots of the issues, and we do little to tackle these in the early stages. Treatment is only available for just a few and the methods used in the healthcare sector are old fashioned and time-consuming. With all the innovations that technology allows and the boom of the self-care industry, people are still facing stigma and not discussing open about mental issues.
This leads to the following question:
What is it that I can do from a UX designer role to help in this?
Who, What, When?
What is the context?
This project was born during my UX Design Course within Career Foundry Bootcamp. My assignment was to build an "Expert Web Application" within the seven months time frame of the course. I loved the challenge but wanted to give it more meaning, so I linked this to an area that I am fond of and of which I thought could benefit from improvement: Mental Health.
I understand how vulnerable this sector is, so I have approached it with humbleness and care and at my best ability to deliver good. Still, I invite any experts in the field to correct my work if it conflicts with any principles/conventions that I wasn't aware of.
What was my role?
I worked as a UX designer under the close supervision and great attention of both my mentor: Pia Klancar and tutor: Matt Kollat.
This included:
Understanding the Problem
Competitors' Analysis
User Research
Personas
Information Architecture
Prototyping
User Testing
Visual Design
Understanding the Challenge
What digital products are currently addressing mental wellbeing?
Psychological resources have been online for a good while. Still, in recent years a significant growth was seen in the Mental Health App Industry, making available endless possibilities in psychological help: online therapy, personalised bot assistants, mood trackers, brain training programs, guided meditation, etc. I can only ask myself: Is there anything missing?
In the diagram below I have represented only a few of these services, luckily, the majority of them have psychologists, clinicians, neuroscientists or other people in authority to construct such services and this is excellent news. But not all of them do.
Some popular options:
Converging Ideas
So, is there room for improvement?
Yes! So far, there are only 2 requirements for the product that I need to build:
1. it needs to be a web application and
2. it needs to connect users with experts in mental wellbeing field.
At this stage, I narrowed my scope and already had a rough plan on some desirable features. This allowed me to deepen my research and look into specific services. Conducting competitor analysis on products like "The School of Life" and "Better Help" served me understanding what is missing on the path we want to take and what could make our product distinctive and useful.
On a brief note, "The School of Life" focuses on teaching emotional intelligence through artistic videos and is the only product that has a community linked to it. Members of the community are open and supportive. However, they support each other with zero presence of an "expert" entity.
On the other hand, "Better Help" is recognised as no. 1 service in online therapy, and prides itself for it, but at a closer look, it seems to have a lot of insufficiencies.
But before diving deeper, I needed to understand who would use our product and how.
"BetterHelp", Top 1 Online Therapy Provider - User Reviews
User Research
But who are our users and what do they need?
Online Research.
I wanted to know everything that I could find out online previous to launching my research. So I dived deep into joining online communities focused on emotional support like groups on Facebook, read reviews about different apps and even went for an online therapy trial which highly confirmed the above dissatisfaction. Not only that I was paired with a therapist from a different time zone and without any prior choice, but I was also given about three sets of questionnaires and worksheets before I could even say hi to my therapist. Not impressed.
Surveys.
To start with, I found it hard to judge if our product will address the general public or should keep more focus on people that go through emotional and mental struggles. Deciding that we all go through these problems at certain times in our lives, I have addressed my research to the general public of different EU counties. I have conducted 15 surveys focused on how and why people use self-help products and what they like/ dislike about them.
The surveys made me conclude that people turn to wellbeing apps or ways of betterment when there IS some kind of unbalance in their lives.
To start with, I found it hard to judge if our product will address the general public or should keep more focus on people that go through emotional and mental struggles. Deciding that we all go through these problems at certain times in our lives, I have addressed my research to the general public of different EU counties. I have conducted 15 surveys focused on how and why people use self-help products and what they like/ dislike about them.
The surveys made me conclude that people turn to wellbeing apps or ways of betterment when there IS some kind of unbalance in their lives.
Interviews
I then wanted to address this specific category and learn more about how self-care applications help them to overcome emotional problems. So I have conducted three more interviews. The focus was on self care habits, existential problems causing anxiety, being transparent and vulnerable online and how technology can help with all these.
I then wanted to address this specific category and learn more about how self-care applications help them to overcome emotional problems. So I have conducted three more interviews. The focus was on self care habits, existential problems causing anxiety, being transparent and vulnerable online and how technology can help with all these.
I was then able to draw the following conclusions:
User Research Key Findings:
People turn to wellbeing apps when there is some sort of unbalance in their lives? - more research needed here.
Community emerged as a very valuable asset and most people appreciate it for: support, fun, knowledge, sense of belonging, cultural mix, like minded people and sharing;
Meditation apps are well loved followed by inspirational / educational videos on youtube;
Men are less likely to seek for support or discuss their mental wellbeing;
People worry about privacy and sharing personal data online;
There is an equal balance between people that are willing to discuss private matters online and people who don't;
The most decisive factor in opting for online therapy is trust;
Existential problems are not representing a cause of daily discomfort;
Perfect confirmation bias sample: how beautifully people feel about communities that they belong to. :)
Picking up my Battle.
What would make a successful product?
User-Driven Hypothesis:
We believe that by creating a holistic product that facilitates self-knowledge and discovery within a safe community of both experts and peers, we can encourage users to open up about their issues, seek support and feel included. We can measure this through qualitative research on the positive impact the product has on users' lives.
Business Driven Hypothesis:
We believe that by making wellbeing experts and their knowledge available and accessible in the community, we can build a trustful and resourceful product that offers quality services. We can measure this by the number of accessed services/experts, active users, successful therapies, the daily number of messages in the community, etc.
We believe that by making wellbeing experts and their knowledge available and accessible in the community, we can build a trustful and resourceful product that offers quality services. We can measure this by the number of accessed services/experts, active users, successful therapies, the daily number of messages in the community, etc.
More specifically, this is what we need:
So, what was our solution?
A platform that builds connection between users and wellbeing experts. A safe community where people can discuss their problems. A platform where experts share resources like articles, podcasts, courses, webinars, etc. A platform where experts freely participate on the forum and are accessible for conversation. A platform that promotes journaling, education and conversation as means for self understanding and mental wellbeing.
How did we get there?
The process was exciting, and following the design thinking approach allowed me to know where I am in the course of events and to get back to previous stages and make necessary corrections.
Let's follow the steps:
Empathising with the Users.
WHOM am I designing for?
Understanding who was going to use the product helped me keep users needs and motivations as top priority. Doing user research helped me identify 3 categories of possible users.
Emma - struggling with mental issues;
Sarah - life is a little unkind at the moment;
Martin - reluctant to discuss inner issues;
I found more comfort in using drawings when communicating ideas in the mental health field compared to images of real people in an attempt to diminish any association or comparisson. I also wanted to put a high emphasis on feelings and psychological needs as a reminder that we are designing for people with a certain level of vulnerability.
Letting the Ideas Flow.
How to deliver the content in a meaningful way?
I have used the crazy 8 method to generate ideas, though it proved to be very challenging as probably my layout/navigation design thinking wasn't mature enough. So I have started observing UI elements on different platforms around me (news, educational, social, financial, etc.) to help me understand how ideas materialise into helpful solutions. Although it lasted longer than 5 minutes, I did come up with a few creative solutions.
Adding empathy maps, user stories, user journey and user flows into the context made my process more manageable and helped me organise the content following what the users want to achieve on the platform.
Keeping the questions in sight while taking design decisions:
Information Architecture.
But do the users find it meaningful?
I found it difficult to categorise the information intuitively; after previously building three distinct site maps, I couldn't decide which is the most intuitive so I have conducted remote card sorting to help me in the process. The categories become visible quickly, and I was then able to adjust my site map accordingly.
I found card sorting to be the most reassuring UX method after user research. :)
Learning responsive design: How lovely it ALL fits in the hamburger menu! :)
Prototyping and Testing.
Am I getting close yet?
Working with pen and paper was great in iterating fast, it allowed me to correct my mistakes early in the process and adjust them with little to no cost.
High Fidelity Prototyping let me set in a high level of details and test the functionality of the product. I could finally follow the users flows step by step and the interactions between pages. The visual elements were not defined yet, I didn't decide about the graphics and colour scheme, but at this stage, I was most interested in the product to function well.
Refining the Design.
How to use visual elements to enhance the experience?
During this stage, I have learnt a lot about the principles of design, emotional design and accessibility. The biggest challenge I have encountered was related to the yellow colour that I have used in the brand - applied to the text. It was also the colour used for interactions and didn't pass the AA accessibility standards. I couldn't change the hue as it represented the logo, so I had to modify all the design. I have then opted for a darker colour for the text and used yellow for emphasis and accents instead.
Why "mellow"?
"Mellow" is quite a compound word.
As an emotion, mellow represents a low intensity of happy, similar to content, tender and pleasant. Still, it can also describe someone's character as being kind and warm-hearted, or it can be used as a verb meaning to improve, to calm, to mature, to soften.
With this great variety of meaning "Mellow" can quickly become a concept that many of our users can identify with or aspire to. The logo looks simple, consisting of a hand-written typo that looks easy-going and unpretentious but it denotes a fair amount of care and effort put into, which is also what is required of someone to become mellow.
Delivering the Product.
The end result?
Conclusions.
Some Final Learnings:
Designing for mental wellbeing is challenging but rewarding. It implies designing with vulnerable people in mind, designing to encourage healthy habits and finding alternative ways to measure your success.
However, I wish I would have had more time to investigate the problem from the "experts" point of view. Online research was beneficial, but I would have preferred to be able to ask therapists my own questions.
Also, I would have liked to add a business context to the project. I wonder what sort of challenges would that bring and how would I respond to them.
This being said, I am happy with the final result. I think a thorough understanding of the problem helped me make informed and advantageous decisions.
And my Favourite Learning: Everything that you deliver in the world, you can't take back. Your design has consequences on people, on business and the environment. Keep this in mind all the time.
Thank you for reading.
Interactive Prototype:
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For imagery and other resources used in my project, thank you to:
undraw.co
