Mental Health Journey, Demystified
How might we demystify the process of seeking mental health support?and make getting help more accessible for people?
Group project
2 UX designers
2 UX researchers
12 weeks (2021.09 – 12)
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on higher levels of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. However, in the age of Google with a plethora of free resources, the journey to find mental health care is still overwhelming and confusing.
Hence, ODYSI aims to provide people with succinct information needed to find the right mental help support and help them go through the journey step by step.
UX designer
I took part in research and target interviews. I designed the interface and UX together with 1 designer and was in charge of animating the final prototype.
RESEARCH
Ideation
User interview
User research
User scenarios
User Persona
DESIGN
Workflows
Wireframes
Prototypes
UX design
Usability testing
PRESENTATION
Most individuals seeking help for the first time feel stressed, overwhelmed, and intimidated.
Although therapists have no trouble finding patients, many BIPOC therapists have difficulty finding clients from their own communities due to stigma.
The main pain point for patients isn’t a lack of tools, but rather a lack of understanding and friendly guidance.
Our initial idea was to create a “one-stop shop” that matches those seeking mental health support with a therapist that fits their needs. Ultimately, we want to reduce the friction present in the current search for therapy, and connect people with help more quickly and seamlessly.
However, through interviews and competitive research, we realized that there are already enough tools available for people to search and contact therapists. The key issue was that people often find the process of “knowing what to do” and “how to do” for seeking the right mental health support overwhelming. Hence, we refined our design challenge to “How might we demystify the process of seeking mental health support?”
After gathering our research findings we developed three personas to synthesize the key goals and needs of our target users. While three personas each had different scenarios, we decided to compress the overlapping needs on persona Ellie to prioritize features for our solution.
We began thinking that we were going to create a scheduling tool that matches patents seeking help with therapists. However after our research we found there was no shortage of tools available. So we turned our attention towards educating users.
We brainstormed and sketched 24 distinct ideas in the directions of combating stigma, finding affordable care and guiding people to resources. We decided on the final solution “Trip planner” considering its feasibility, originality and usefulness. It frames seeking care as a “trip” - to head to a place one would feel better.
“Trip planner” is a tool that helps users plan their mental health journey - To help them set their destination, figure out who can guide them there, understand what they’ll do in the journey, how long it will take and how much it will cost.
We presented our prototype to 8 users for testing. The results revealed that we need to build a more intuitive and welcoming interface.
We presented the click-through prototype to the 8 users and asked them to complete a task using each flow. We used the “think aloud” method to gauge participants’ immediate thoughts and asked follow-up questions.
To engage users with less overwhelming experience, the creative vision for our new idea was an island hopping game, reminiscent of several adventure-based video games from our childhood. After visiting each island, a new island is unlocked.
We learned from users that they found the task list most valuable, so we decided to focus on improving this feature. We went back to the drawing board, and during an intense brainstorming session, we came up with the idea of gamifying our task list feature.
Make tasks more specific, actionable, and targeted to provide clear, concise steps for the user to follow. Users were unclear about the purpose of each task.
Simplify the interface and the information hierarchy to make the experience more intuitive. Our users were confused by the flow and information architecture of the app.
Add a gamification aspect to the app that both improve enjoyment can clarify user flow. Users know what they should do intuitively.
Provide a guide for each stage of journey. Users felt welcomed by friendly landing pages that provide thorough information on what to do.
How does “island-hopping” work?
Each task is represented by an island the user can travel to. Every time a user completes a task, it unlocks more islands they can travel to. This taught us an important lesson: like island hopping, the mental health journey is not linear. We also devised 3 “paths” the users can take to reach their goals: community care, self-care, or professional care.
In addition to this change, we decreased the prominence of our learning center, eliminated our “home screen” and added more questions to the onboarding screen to make the experience more customized.
Reach out proactively to get valuable insights that can help understand the problem right
When we first decided to approach the topic of mental health, our biggest concern seemed to be finding specialist interviewees to share their insight. After some googling, skimming through therapist directories, and carefully sending emails one by one, we were pleasantly surprised to receive numerous, welcoming responses. The whole process of hearing our targets' thoughts and experiences helped us to notice the real issue to be addressed and dive deep into the actual problem.
Take accessibility into consideration for the design. Be ADA compliant and follow WCAG guidelines.
Provide more customized experience for the users. Convey a more personal, intimate atmosphere throughout.
Find out user's level of stress at each phase and iterate further enhance usefulness and enjoyment.
ODYSI was presented to the entire HCDE cohort through Miro board and received positive feedbacks.
Love the idea!! great UI
Well presented and love your story!
Love the graphics!
Really like the UI and visual you guys have done.
Wish I had found this earlier as a product! Awesome idea!
Love the inclusion of insured users, the design is beautiful!
The graphics are amazing. Love the gamification of the journey.
Love how comprehensive the app is and the quote"mental health is not linear"
Wonderful idea! There's such a huge stigma around mental health issues, especially within the Asian community.
I really like the visuals of your Miro board as well as the UI. Amazing job!