Ripple Effect
An app specifically designed for people who are struggling with mental health issues and are looking for alternative methods to treat anxiety, stress/burnout, depression and other symptoms.
What if the next global health crisis is a mental health pandemic? It is here now. According to Gallup, anger, stress, worry and sadness have been on the rise globally for the past decade — long before the COVID-19 pandemic — and all reached record highs in 2020 and are continuing to rise.
Anxiety and depression disorders manifest in very different ways than physical illness does. While they can debilitate the individual, anxiety and depression disorders also can debilitate teams, families, schools and all institutions around them.
In this project, together with Perrine Planche and Mark Lewis, we asked ourselves many questions, such as “HOW CAN WE DESIGN SOMETHING WITH PURPOSE?” or “WHAT ARE THE METHODS TO TREAT THESE SYMPTOMS?”. To find an answer to this, we first looked at the people around us who had a low during the pandemic. In talking with them, we were told that there are long WAITING LISTS FOR THERAPY or that MEDICATION WAS NOT AN OPTION FOR THEM. We wanted to find out how we could help solve some of their pain points and, most importantly, find out if their needs aligned with our business goals.
“It is hard for someone to understand how it feels, if you’ve never been depressed.”
We heard this phrase over and over again from our potential users, and we understood that there was something to it. However, we were determined to understand it, so we dug deeper using qualitative and quantitative research methods. We conducted interviews with influential speakers and therapists and posted our survey on forums and Facebook groups. At this stage, emphasis has never been more important!
The good and the bad
Today, there are many apps to help users understand and manage their mental health. Mental health apps can have a number of different goals; they may be informational, to help users learn more about mental health. They may be tools to help people stay on top of their overall wellness, or they may provide digital versions of treatments for mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more. Depending on your needs, you may use apps on their own, in your transition to face-to-face treatment, or as an add on to therapy you are already receiving.
As we listened to our potential users during interviews, we realised that the struggle was indeed real. In a “phase” of depression, users described that their energy level is low and everything feels 5 times harder. Users described having multiple mental health apps for different needs, such as one to keep a journal, another to listen to calming music, meditate, talk to a therapist, and so on. The problem with this is that users do not want to switch between multiple apps because they already feel exhausted and are not very motivated.
“It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we’re stuck but the first approach should not involve anti depressants.”
Users want to know if there are more options for healing, as some mentioned that pills were not the right treatment for them. They would like more flexibility, more methods like sound therapy, scientific research on alternative treatments, or just a community to talk to.
Mental health apps should take into account the fact that users are overwhelmed in their “stages” of depression and that it is important to address their very individual needs and help them treat them effectively.
Define the solution to the problem
To be honest, we have found that this is a very difficult task, since mental health is such a delicate issue that affects very fragile people. And we have observed that most people simply have a hard time finding the right methods or mustering the energy to see a therapist to treat their issues, leading users to download and purchase multiple apps. This in turn leads to even more confusion and difficulty finding a way to heal and/or keep up with their overall healing progress.
Competitor Analysis
In this phase, we started our competitor analysis, which included 7 apps that were mentioned by some of our interviewees, as well as some apps that are quite common on the market.
We realized that our app essentially needed to combine different functions of healing methods, because the biggest problem our potential users had was switching between many apps.
At this point, it was time to do a detailed analysis of their product identity and functions. Here, we analyzed the number of downloads, their ratings, and most importantly, their best features to understand what to focus on. We also looked at whether the apps are available on Android and IOS and whether they are free or in purchase apps.
Meet Hendrik
Through our reasearch we defined our User Persona. As much as we wanted to help all kinds of users, for the purpose of staying focused within MVP and to help humanize the project, we chose to focus on one user type: The late 20’s Professional.
Hendrik is a young, creative film producer who works a lot and struggles with anxiety and depression and develops mild tinnitus. His main concern is to find different methods to overcome his symptoms and find inner peace without having to resort to conventional medical therapies. Basically, he is looking for ways to sustainable healing.
Here we designed Hendriks path to healing to get a feel for how someone’s mental health might improve as well as their quality of life, if they chose to use the app, and where opportunities would lie along the lifecycle for expansion of the app’s MVP.
At this stage it was clear to us that we want to design an app that allows the user to find all methods in one app.
Mission Prototype!
When defining our site architecture, we designed 3 different versions to find out which one would work best and meet the needs of our users. We have chosen the version shown above.
In order to prioritize, we used the MoSCow method to figure out what we will mainly focus on in prototyping, and of course, to determine our user flow. Since our user persona also deals with tinnitus, we wanted to give our users the ability to create their own binaural beats, as we have found through various studies that these sounds also help with depression and anxiety. Below you can see our MUST HAVE’s that we will focus on when designing our product.
We started by sketching different screens according to our site map, then building our mid-fi prototype. To find out if our mid-fi works, we ran a maze test and defined the tasks our users have to do.
62% of the participants completed the task on the expected path(s). However, we had to make some minor changes as some of the interactions did not work for some users.
We also performed a visual analysis of 2 apps that received good ratings for their user interface. In the form of mood boards, we designed 3 different visual design directions and sent them out for desirability testing to see what effect the colors and images had on our users and what words they associated with what they saw.
The design system was created by grouping the elements that allow us to design, realize and develop the product.
Hi-fi prototype
Conclusions
We were free to choose what we wanted to design in terms of wellness. During our first phone call, we realised that we had heard a lot about the increase in mental health problems. So we wanted to design something that would help people struggling with these issues, because it was important to us to design something with meaning.
During our research, we had so much information that it was hard to figure out what to focus on. So we often had to go back and make changes as we found many user pain points that we wanted to solve. The research took us a lot of time because it was neither an easy topic nor an easy task. We found that we wanted to make users’ lives easier by giving them a product that allows them to find help in different ways, without having to switch between many apps, and that is also financially accessible to everyone.
It’s also important to mention that we did not think about inclusive design here. There are disabled people who also struggle with mental health issues, and we should have considered that as well. So that would probably be the next step… To keep iterating, keep working on the prototype and see what’s feasible, keeping deadlines/time frame in mind.
