Living as an international student for my master's was very challenging and really made me realize the importance of looking after mental health. I struggled with loneliness and sleep issues especially due to the sudden shift in the environment and societal pressure that celebrates normative lifestyle and behavior. Talking with people of my age group made me realize that I am not the only one facing these challenges and this motivated me to get into the depths of this problem. MindMate was my capstone project and I worked on it 0-1 to bring the idea to existence.

OVERVIEW

Role (solo)

UX Design and Research

Timeline

Nov 22 - Mar 23

IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL HEALTHCARE IN YOUNG ADULTS

📈 There is a rise in mental health needs in young adults(between the ages of 15 - 29) with increased academic pressure, cyberbullying, loneliness, job insecurity and financial instability

Learning to take care of mental health is very crucial as it empowers people to face challenging and stressful situations with greater resilience, clarity, and a sense of control. It can also prevent depression, mental disorders and suicides.

Young adults find it difficult to handle stressful situations and increasing pressure, affecting their mental health, academics and sometimes life itself.

THE PROBLEM

Lack of experience: They lack experience in dealing with mental health concerns, lack mental health awareness and might also have a stigma attached to it.

Lack of clarity: Due to the abundance of information available today, they lack clarity as to which solutions will suit their individual situation.

A tool that helps young adults develop a strong and healthy mindset to face stressful and challenging situations in life.

THE SOLUTION

CBT solutions

Psychoeducation

Self-monitoring

“ This is amazing! I would love to use this app.”

- USER

Led the design of this project from research, design to user testing, simplifying the mental healthcare journey for young adults willing to develop a strong and healthy mindset.

Low user error rate of 5%

OUTCOME

Net Promoter Score

Achieved a 60% NPS score

Achieved 84% task success rate

Task success and error rates

🌊 But getting to the solution has been a messy process…

Initially, I started with a focus on helping international students adjust to their lives in the USA as that's what I struggled the most.

BACK STORY

International students face a multitude of challenges when adjusting to life in the US including difficulty adjusting to a new culture, language, and social norms, homesickness, loneliness, financial constraints and academic expectations to name a few.

Surveying with 82 individuals revealed that...
🤯 78% were feeling overwhelmed to manage changes in their life in the US!

💡 This made me think that maybe the core problem is not really about the challenges that come with changes but it's about mindset!

👩🏻‍💻💥 As a designer, I saw a potential scope in
the root cause of the problem- helping young adults develop a strong and healthy mindset to cope with challenging and stressful situations in life, and decided to work on it!

🤔 What intrigued me was remaining 22% of people were going through similar changes in life but they felt in control of the situation

I interviewed 8 individuals between the ages of 15 - 29 who were facing difficulties to manage their life

KICK-OFF

“ It took panic attack for me to realize how stressed I was and how much my mental health was compromised. ” #depression

“ Started questioning my own decisions when stress increased a lot. ” #self-doubt

“ I slowly started getting out of depression phase when I started sharing my problems with my family. ” #social insecurity

Key Insight #1

7/8 participants Lacked preparedness for stressful situations

They mentioned not being mentally prepared for changes in their educational journey, cities, personal lives etc, that it took a huge toll on their state of mind.

They paid attention to their mental health only when the stress and anxiety increased so much that it started showing through physical signs like, panic attacks, shivering, fever, hair fall, acne, body pain etc. and they didn’t know what to do.

Key Insight #2

4/8 participants had a fear of judgment

They felt embarrassed or ashamed to seek help for their mental health issues due to the stigma attached to it or because they never asked for help before.

With this, I could clearly see the real problem in the mindset of young adults!

DEFINING THE PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we help young adults develop a strong and healthy mindset for life's stressful situations?

Objective: Empower users with the right tools and techniques to help them face challenging and stressful situations with a strong and healthy mindset and no fear of judgment.

USER PERSONA

🗂️ I decided to Organize UX Research findings into user persona to drive design decisions

USER PERSONA

CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGES

1. Limited resources to conduct research with experts, their views and lack of business plans

2. Limited design perspective as I was the solo designer working on this problem

💁🏻‍♀️ My approach? focusing on the core issue, MVP and frequent user feedback!

Ease users to work on their mental health without asking to take stigma-related actions

As the young adult user base is very familiar with using different mobile apps, focusing on mobile application solutions seemed the right approach to ease them into working on mental health.

👩🏻‍💻 I looked at existing solutions in the market to solve a similar problem.

I was looking at these existing solutions as opportunities for collaboration rather than competition and what can I learn from them.

Competitive Analysis

DESIGN DECISION 1

Insight 1: Market Saturation & Niche Opportunities

The market is crowded with established brands (Calm, Headspace) offering a wide range of features for the general crowd. There's an opportunity for niche apps targeting specific needs like anxiety (Mindshift) and demand for mental healthcare solutions in young adults is on the rise.

Insight 2 : Focus on Engagement & Personalization

Too many features are adding distraction. Personalization through mood tracking, goal setting, and content recommendations helps to boost user engagement.

Insight 3 : Trust & Cost Effectiveness

Cost and trust are key factors that can influence user preferences when choosing a service. Established brands with a strong track record (Calm, Breathe) and those emphasizing data privacy (Youper) enjoy higher trust among users.

😎 This helped me focus on the areas of demand...

REFINING THE PROBLEM STATEMENT BASED ON DEMAND

How might we help young adults develop a strong and healthy mindset for stressful situations in life through personalised and trustworthy solutions?

🌎 Then I explored possible user journeys in mobile app design...

A habit-forming app that helps develop a growth mindset in young adults

“This is ideal but trying to form a habit when my life is already messed up is like adding more pressure to the existing situation.”

-USER

1. User installs the MindMate app to help form a better mindset to deal with life

2. Gets notification of the day

3. Opens MindMate app to follow through a set of good habits for mental wellbeing

4. Gets daily rewards for working towards mental wellbeing

USER JOURNEY

Hence, I switched the app's focus from habit-forming to the situational use case.

🤔 But is there really a solution that can instantly help users feel in control of their emotions??

Deciding CBT-based solutions that are proven to help with situational use case

My objective was to focus on solutions that can be used for dealing with situational stressful use cases. ​As proven by multiple sources, CBT is one of the best solutions for situational stress management and has been tested for effectiveness!

Some apps like Sanvello and MindShift were doing it already but they lacked a clear focus with which the solutions were presented.

I focused on 3 main pillars of Cognitive Behavior Therapy:

1. Self-monitoring

2. Psychoeducation

3. CBT treatment

DESIGN DECISION 2

Hence, I focused on building a simple and intuitive user journey for CBT-based solution!

1. Designing self-monitoring to understand the problems user is facing at the core level where user can do simple check-ins of mood and issues

Guerilla testing suggested that the 3rd idea was most liked by the users. It also fits with the usability principle of user preferring vertical scroll option.

More about importance of self-monitoring...

UX Research insight:

2. Making users knowledgeable about the issues they monitored with Psychoeducation in bite-sized stories that can help with developing a healthy, practical mindset

🤔 But how do I make sure the content of psychoeducation is trustworthy?

The idea is to provide expert-curated psychoeducation to users based on the issues they monitor in the app.

Wireframes

UX Research Insight:

To make it easily consumable for target users of young adults, I decided to present the content in the form of stories.

💡 Idea: Verifying the content by experts in the field and clearly communicating this trustworthiness to the users

Final Designs of Psychoeducation stories that mention "Verified by" experts to make it trustworthy

“This feature is super helpful to know more about the problems I might be facing!”

- USER

“I like that the information is verified by doctors. It shows that the content is trustworthy and not randomly made up.”

- USER

3. Designing the suggested Cognitive Behaviour Therapy treatment for the problems that the user has monitored that can prepare user to face the challenge at hand by developing a healthier and stronger mindset

CBT technique of "Thought Reflection"

The idea is to provide CBT-based solutions to users based on the issues they check-in in the app. For the MVP, I decided to design CBT technique of Thought Reflection. Later, it can include multiple CBT techniques.

“I like that the information is verified by doctors. It shows that the content is trustworthy and not randomly made up.”

- USER

Focuses on the business scope of Helping young adults develop a strong and healthy mindset for life's challenging situations

Trustworthy content verified by experts

Putting together all three components: Self-monitoring, Psychoeducation and CBT treatment in an easy-to-follow user flow

Personalised suggestions on CBT-treatment to get best results

Userflow of all three componenets

💡 Allowing users to skip steps

Putting everything together came with its own challenges!

💡 Everything should feel cohesive and intuitive

💡 This user flow should help users get instant solution to situational/daily problems they might be facing

💡 The flow should be engaging enough for users to complete it

“This app is super helpful! I would love to use this when it becomes available.”

- USER

“This app is very engaging. I was hooked to complete the whole check-in process and didn't even feel restricted throughout the process.”

-USER

OUTCOME

The MindMate project was well received by users

Users liked Logging in emotions, Predicted patterns, CBT based journaling, and Community discussions. Achieved 84% task success rate and a 60% NPS score, signifying good likability of the product. More importantly, users felt empowered after learning and following the suggested solutions. This translates to strong and healthy young minds and potentially, improved life satisfaction in our young population.

The future holds exciting possibilities for further personalization, such as AI-powered content recommendations.

LEARNINGS

1. Refining problem statement and prioritising is extremely important in designing products!

Getting clarity on the problem statements and user needs, uncovering root problems and deciding which problems actually need to be solved in the current project’s scope are all extremely important things that form a strong base for the entire project.

2. Having a clear answer for why I made a certain choice in the design over other options is important.

This basically helped in checking the hypothesis that the choices I made thinking that it would solve a certain issue actually solved the user's problem or not. Noticing this more helped me to make more conscious, evident-based design choices.

Thank you for reading ♥️

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