Event: Toronto Jam for Good Hackathon, 2019
Project scope: Mental Health MVP
Timeline: 3 days
Tools: Adobe CC, Sketch, Whimsical
My Role: Product Designer / Team of 5
I collaborated with my team on user research, ideation and led the wireframing and design phase.
Background
In any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental illness or addiction problem. By the time they reach 40, 1 in 2 have—or have had—a mental illness. Most mental health problems begin during childhood or adolescence, and youth aged 15-24 are more likely to experience mental illness and/or substance use disorders than any other age group.
Problems
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Mental health is a heavily stigmatized subject with many root causes and branching, complex issues.
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People often don’t want to talk about their problems and finding reliable help is challenging
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People may resort to self-diagnosis which can have negative consequences
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Some have had bad experience with therapists
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People feel it's easier to talk to friends and family first before seeking professional help
The Good News:
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More people are aware of mental health issues compared to 5 years ago (Based on a 2015 survey by CAMH)
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87% of Canadians reported that they are more aware of mental health issues since Bell Let’s Talk initiatives began
How might we normalize mental health issues and bring them into everyday conversations?
Goal
Provide a digital “safe space” for people who struggle with mental health issues to safely and privately talk about their problems with like-minded people.
Success Metrics
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2-5 new registrations per week
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Frequency of time spent on the app starting conversations, contributing to forum discussions
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Number of invitations sent to friends
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Quality of conversations and amount of positive words used
Assumptions
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Social media is a powerful tool to leverage in creating global movements with high levels of impact (Bell Let’s Talk initiative was a successful campaign that got people talking about Mental Health more).
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At the end of the day, we all want to feel connected, therefore social connections are good for us mentally, emotionally and physically.
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We value quality over quantity when it comes to friends, family and relationships
Market Research
Mental Health is such a broad topic, our initial team was split into two to deal with the different types of therapy: professional help vs. turning to friends and family. My team chose the friends and family approach.
Notable competitors include Calm, Headspace, Moodnotes and Joyable.
We did not include them because they did not feature a social networking aspect and focused more on self-help and meditation.
User Interviews
Going outside to interview people on the streets about a sensitive topic like mental health was awkward so we decided to conduct research was with people we already know, which was our friends and family. We opened the conversation up by asking if they were comfortable with talking about the topic of mental health and took it from there.
We interviewed 2 users for each team member, for a total of 8 users.
Questions
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How do you feel about the word mental health? What do you know about it?
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When was the last time you had an open conversation about mental health?
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What worked/ didn’t work?
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What was helpful? Unhelpful?
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If you didn’t talk about it, what held you back?
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Is there a service/medium to get you help?
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What does a safe space mean to you? Why?
Insights
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6/8 users feel there is a lot more awareness about MH than before
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Half of users turn to friends and colleagues first than to professional help
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6/8 users think more work needs to be done about MH, especially in the workplace
User Personas
Drawing inspiration from non-profit Ample Labs’ ChalmersBot (an AI-powered chatbot for people experiencing homelessness), we knew a social media app is the best channel for our users because most people own a mobile phone.
We created 3 personas - primary (Gina), secondary (Josef), and special (Kyle) to show the full spectrum of features of our app. They cover the difference in needs and urgencies that represent our user base.
User Flow
Prioritizing product features with users’ needs
The feedback we got from another team during the hackathon forced us to question and validate our value propositions and business model.
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Why was our app better than WhatsApp or Facebook?
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Why would anyone move a normal, organic conversation into our app?
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Should we focus on 1:1 conversations or include a community-based forum?
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How do we deal with people who have no friends and/or want to stay anonymous?
We revisited our original idea of defining what a “safe space” meant and tried creating something that will cater to one-on-one conversations. This solves user’s needs for trust and privacy because it automatically establishes a place where users know they can go to and engage with their friends and other members in a safe and meaningful way.
Design
How will users who are not yet comfortable sharing their problems invite their friends in a safe and private way? We know how powerful word-of-mouth is, so we gave users the option to invite their friends through email invitation. This eliminates any confusion that it’s spam, creates trust between both parties and a good ice break to a heavily stigmatized subject.
Chat features
The most important piece to include in our chat feature are the help and emergency buttons. We want users - from both ends - to be able to see and use these buttons at all times in the event they need professional assistance or call for help at any given time. As a social app, the Chat icon is the centrepiece in the navigation, followed by Profile and Resources icons.
Know the signs, use the tools
We’ve all been in situations where we want to help a friend out but don’t know how. Despite our best intentions, sometimes situations get complicated and we’re afraid of things going very wrong.
Connect with expert advisers to de-escalate a situation or call for emergency help with a single tap of a button. Reliable and available 24/7 at your fingertips.
Kate gets the sense that the conversation is getting quite heavy and feels she needs to call for professional help.
She activates the Help Button on the app where she gets a notification that help is on the way.
On the other end, Jamie can see that his friend has recommended help for him and can accept or decline.
Connect through common interests
Just because this is a social app, it doesn’t mean we all have to be a social butterfly! We’ve introduced new ways you can feel comfortable in breaking the ice with a long, lost friend or someone new.
Connect on a more human level by digging deep into their background and personality. Found someone who likes to read Shakespeare while jamming to Bob Marley? Send them a message expressing your mutual love for the arts!
Key lessons learned
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Mental health is dynamic which makes it hard to gauge through generic metrics
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Fine line between trust and privacy. Disclosure of information may affect a person’s ability to get a job or promotion etc.
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Mental health is complex, just like humans. One method may work for one person but not the other. More research is needed to understand underlying issues
Future Iterations
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A journal feature where users can record their thoughts and feelings. Writing can be a form of therapy, so it will be convenient for users to have a place to record their experiences right in the app
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A community forum that invites users to talk about their interests, hobbies, personal stories. Resources about MH will be included to help them get the right information they need
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Monetization: Partnership with professional therapists, authors, writers - anyone who have experience in MH to promote their work/service to be used as credible support and resources