Disclaimer 📢

Right off the bat, it’s simply a design project. This is a project was done in a group consisting of 2 members . In this case study, I am going to share the design process & the decisions we made while enhancing the mental health experience.

Why mental health?

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession have negatively affected many people’s mental health and created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness and substance use disorders. During the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely consistent, up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from April to October 2020.

The pandemic has both short and long-term implications for mental health and substance use, particularly for groups at risk of new or exacerbated mental health disorders and those facing barriers to accessing care.

A KFF Health Tracking Poll from July 2020 also found that many adults are reporting specific negative impacts on their mental health and well-being, such as difficulty sleeping (36%) or eating (32%), increases in alcohol consumption or substance use (12%), and worsening chronic conditions (12%), due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. As the pandemic wears on, ongoing and necessary public health measures expose many people to experiencing situations linked to poor mental health outcomes, such as isolation and job loss.

In January 2021, 41% of adults reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely stable since spring 2020. In a survey from June 2020, 13% of adults reported new or increased substance use due to coronavirus-related stress, and 11% of adults reported thoughts of suicide in the past 30 days.

Problem statement🤔

Post pandemic people have gone through some tough situations which have taken a toll on them. Add this to the existing taboo associated with mental health and an individual’s denial of being a mental health patient, and we have a situation that we don’t want to be in. There’s also just a lack of a whole lot of things in the mental health space.

Target Users 👪

• Any gender
• Age group 20–40 years
• Suffering from mental health issues
• Have some form of anxiety disorder but are not diagnosed
• Do not have an anxiety disorder but face anxious moments

The design process which I followed 📝

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases — Discover, Define, Ideate, Design, Testing— it is most useful to tackle problems.

Let’s discuss step by step! 🗣

Domain research🖥

Like everybody else, we took to the internet to understand everything about the domain as well as the issues faced by people who suffer from anxiety.

Psychological distress is defined as a state of emotional suffering typically characterized by symptoms of depression and anxiety, which is recognized as a common mental health problem in the community.

27% reported feeling anxiety and 15% depression in the last seven days.(JAN 2021}. For 30%, the main reason influencing their current emotions is the economic situation. The general situation in India has affected the daily life of young people as 46% report having less motivation to do activities they usually enjoyed. 36% feel less motivated to do regular chores.

A situation that generates deep concern and is a call to national health authorities is that 60% have felt the need to ask for help concerning their physical and mental well-being. Despite this, 40% did not ask for help.

Symptoms of an anxiety attack include:

• feeling faint or dizzy
• shortness of breath
• dry mouth
• sweating
• chills or hot flashes
• apprehension and worry
• restlessness
• distress
• fear
• numbness or tingling

Lifestyle changes required in case of anxiety disorders?

• Reduce and manage sources of stress in your life.
• Learn how to identify and stop negative thoughts.
• Get regular, moderate exercise.
• Practice meditation or yoga.
• Eat a balanced diet.
• Join a support group for people with anxiety or panic attacks.
• Limit your consumption of alcohol, drugs, and caffeine.

The major mental health issues that have been reported to have been associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial, anger and fear globally. Stress, anxiety and depression go hand in hand with the COVID-19 pandemic, results from studies done globally has shown the increasing prevalence of mental health disorders among various population groups. Historically, disease pandemics have been associated with grave psychological consequences. A recent article published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that COVID-19 may lead to increased risk of suicide.

User Interview👨🏻‍🤝‍👨🏻

Once we understood the domain, it was clear that the theme is very personal and people wouldn’t provide enough information through google forms. So we decided to conduct user interviews with people through telephonic calls and zoom discussion.

We conducted a one-to-one survey with over 14 participants from the age group 20 to 40 years.

Questionnaire📰

• Have you been through a mental health issue/disorder? (y/n)

• Have you received an official diagnosis from a doctor (clinical psychologist/psychiatrist)?

• What was your diagnosis and your experience?

• What triggered the mental health issue?

• Were you on medication and what were the prescribed medicines?

• What was the medication course duration for you?

• Did you follow it through or did you leave it mid-course?

• What where the changes you noticed at the initial stages? (Para)

• How did it affect your daily life?

• Daily routine

• Did you try any other remedies/treatments or were you completely dependent over medical treatment? (if yes please mention some useful remedies)

• What measures did you consider to prevent the disorder from getting worse?

• Did you have any social support?

• Was there any hesitation in communicating with your family/friends or a doctor about difficulties? If yes what were the difficulties you faced and how did you overcome them?

• Have you ever tried any app to manage your anxiety or the mental issue at hand? If yes, which app do you use?

• Can you tell me more about this app?

• Can you tell how was your experience using this app?

Research Insights😇

• After completing the survey, we figured out the most common triggers were performance pressure, getting bullied, health issues, career stress, separation phobia, and comparison with the peer group.

• 9 out of 14 participants stated that their medication course helped them get better. On the other hand, the remaining 5 participants left the medication mid-course and opted for meditation/yoga, physical activities, and Journaling.

• Participants experienced a lot of physical and psychological changes in their bodies and lifestyle at the initial stage of anxiety. Some of the symptoms were as follows:

a. Less competitiveness, Feeling left out, Self-doubt, bad health, losing concentration, stress, lack of confidence.

b. Sweating, body cramps, numbness, confusion, gloomy thoughts, increased/decreased heart rate.

• Losing focus, irritation, losing self-confidence, nervousness, and gloomy thoughts were the negative behavioral changes in their lifestyle.

• Meditation, yoga, physical exercise, journaling, movies/shows were found to be the most helpful remedies other than the medical treatment.

• 6 out of 14 participants had social support and the remaining 8 participants hesitated in communicating with family/friends and doctors.

• 9 out of 14 participants have tried different types of apps/websites to manage their mental health issues. Some of them were: Mind-ease, Mood path, Mind Diagnostics, and headspace.

The majority of the participants were looking for an alternative method/solution to try and manage their anxiety.

Competitive Analysis🥇

At this stage, we looked into other mental health apps. To our surprise, there were a lot of mental health apps available. So we started to study each and every app to understand the pros and cons of every app.

User persona👨‍🦰

The results of domain research & user interviews revealed there were several type of users with diverse needs. So, I accumulated the different insights & patterns and integrated them to form a primary persona: Lakshay. Here, you can see his motivations, goals, needs, fears & frustrations.

Empathy mapping👨‍🦰

Having a primary persona handy wasn’t enough. I had to dive deep into Lakshay’s behaviors & attitudes. So, an empathy map was built that helped me gain a deeper understanding of our persona.

User journey mapping📌

After having an empathy map the next step was to create a journey map of the user to help us gain an interaction between the user and the app.

User flow😉

The user flow chart was the toughest stage of the UX process for us. Our problems had been identified, our features were defined, We had both concept and problem statements, and now it was time to take the theory and put it into action.

The user flow is the blueprint of the app and what sets the foundation for a seamless experience. It’s also a great tool to share with stakeholders, as well as with any developers who eventually need to understand how to code the app… so no pressure!

Card sorting🗃

Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the information. In this card sorting session, we organized topics into categories that made sense to us and we also labelled these groups.

Information Architecture📍

It was evident from the competitive analysis that the app needs a personalized experience for which the current IA needs too change. And the change was so massive, it couldn’t accommodate few updates here and there. We decided it’s better to build from the ground up.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

High-fidelity Wireframes

Usability testing🧪

After creating wireframes and choosing a style, we started to do the final design. We made a prototype of the project and asked participants to do tasks in order to test it with them. We picked realistic scenarios to engage the participants in reaching their goals with the app. Then we conducted the desirability test to understand users’ attitudes, and the navigation test to see how the users understood the navigation. After that, we ran a user test to get overall feedback.

Visual design😍

After implementing the feedback points received from previous phase, it was time for the visual design.

Final Screens💖

Hey! don’t forget to check out the working prototype here.

Conclusion😀

Working on this project was a fantastic experience because this is my first UI/UX case study. Through this project, I realized how important the research stage is. In this project, the issues that emerge in concluding a task have been analyzed, and methods for assessing an undertaking have been talked about. Only after in-depth interviews did I understand what was important to users and how to make this application truly valuable for them. I realized that by skipping the research phase, one could end up with a product that no one needs. Most importantly mental illness is a very sensitive topic. You need to handle each and every design decision with a lot of responsibility & empathy. Special thanks to Tancy Moira Moore {Counseling psychologist} for continuous support and helping us understand the issue.