Project
NuMind
Client
UXL's Blueprint Design Challenge 1st Place
Overview
Advancements in technology have provided various opportunities to address the challenges associated with mental health awareness. The 2020 pandemic highlighted the importance of accessing these resources. However, the stigma associated with seeking help still remains persistent.
As a Blueprint design challenge hosted by User Experience Laurier, my partner and I set out to address the prompt challenge: "How might we leverage technology to promote mental health awareness and provide accessible support for students in need?"
Goal
Because of the scope of the challenge is so large, we focused the challenge to a specific problem statement:
“Students aim to manage their mental health using available resources but lack confidence in their suitability and benefit, often resorting to them only as a last option.”
Focusing on a specific pain points of users allowed to us to be better guided throughout the design process, remembering to stick to the solution needed.
Role & Process
My partner (Nancy Zheng) and I collaborated together to contribute equally to this project.
In order to breakdown the problem, we first brainstormed reasons why students exactly struggle with their mental health:
- Academic stress → time management
- Career stress
- Relationships/friendships/life stress
- Time management stress
We initially wanted to focus on addressing time management, as it can affect all facets of stress in our lives. But after conducting brief interviews to better understand the topic at hand, we soon realized that various types time management products already exist. Products like Pomodoro technique timers, planners, calendars, Notion, time blocking, and sticky notes.
Instead, we pivoted to addressing the root cause of better supporting students with their mental health overall. This would be the most effective when it comes to helping students improve their mental health as a whole.
a) interview takeaways
When constructing our interview questions, we wanted to ensure to understand diverse types of students to better address this issue for all kinds of students. We interviewed 6 people within our user market, all being undergraduate students in Ontario.
PAIN POINTS
- Wishes for resources to be more immediately available → resources are basically fully booked and booking in advance is required, unhelpful as many students need help in the very near future, by the time students get the appointment it's too late
- Lack of professionals accessible to students → students feel that if they're not getting professional help, they might as well just go to friends & family for help
- Existing resources are not tailored to students' needs → after using mental health resources, it doesn't meet their expectations and feels like a waste of time
- Not aware of what's really offered by the school → someone who is new to school's mental health resources are not familiar with how it works
GAIN POINTS
On the flip side, users said that the school offers many types of resources and that they like having various options to work out issues by themselves. Overall, students will only use the resources if they know what’s available to them and also actually properly addresses their needs.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Students try to keep their mental health in check by finding a readily available mental health resource that’s right for them, but there’s a lack of confidence in the suitability and benefit of each, ultimately leading them to avoid using resources unless it’s their last resort.
b) Goals
After gathering research, these are the key takeaways to help us understand and empathize with the goals and frustrations of students:
- Students struggle to process their emotions and want to feel more in control
- Students don’t know what resources are available and suitable for them
- Existing resources seem pointless due to them being vague and generalized
To generate potential solutions, we engaged in a brainstorming session. By encouraging the inclusion of even the worst possible ideas, I wanted to ensure that no idea was overlooked or dismissed.
Based on the results of the research, we sketched a user flow with wireframes that will help us loosely understand how users will interact with our product.
In four phases:
1. The user journey starts with logging into today's resources
2. Users then access daily quiz questions to log their feelings
3. Engaging with the chatbot allows for discussions on emotions and potential solutions
4. Users track their progress, witnessing the evolution of their mental health.
With growth and scalability in mind, we established a design system early on to maintain strong visual branding throughout the project.
Our solution name "NuMind" is a play on words, mimicking the phrase "New Mind". We wanted our logo display this concept by illustrating symbols of the mind. Maintaining a modern and simple look, a single line was used to show the contour line of a brain and person smiling.
Solution
NuMind is a daily journal chatbot app where users can track their mental health progress.
We found that users' needs can be addressed through 3 main ideas.
1. Complete Daily Reflections - Understanding Why and How
Daily reflections help users understand the why and how of their current feelings and stressors. It’s a 6 question long quiz with choices of selection or typing answers. By walking users through current feelings and stressors, this can help users figure out the cause of their feelings.
We wanted for this process to be as simple and convenient as possible, which is why we provided various answering options so that users can respond through preferred formats.
2. Immediate Accessible Support with Real-Time Encouragement & Insights - Talking It Out
Users can talk to the chatbot about anything, anywhere. Chatbot will help users explore more of what they’re struggling with. The concept of "talking to yourself" also allows for users to make the conversation as open or closed off as they’d like.
3. Receive Personalized Solutions to Help Users Progress in Mental Health Journey
Finally, based on quiz results and conversations with chatbot, mental health resources from your school and professionals will be suggested. Our goal was to help users discover what is actually available to them from universities and help them make the most out of these resources.
By being knowledgeable about resources that are not only free but tailored to their current needs, NuMind helps users to constantly progress in their mental health journey. No matter where you are in your mental health journey. As a visual, users’ progress is shown through weeks or months and their mini me will display their most recent moods.
An SOS button is provided in the top at all times as an emergency, for users to have immediate resources to go when in a crisis. This leads users to call either emergency services or a mental-health hotline.
Mitigating Challenges
Here are 3 challenges we expect to arise and how we will mitigate them.
1. How will sensitive data about user’s mental health remain confidential?
- Clearly articulate app's privacy policy & use secure encryption protocols, collecting only necessary data.
2. Users may feel that resources provided don’t fulfill their needs.
- At the end of every chat, users will be asked to provide feedback based on how satisfied they are with resources provided.
3. Schools may not allow for their resources to be referenced.
- Consult solely professionals for resources
End Product
NuMind ended up winning first place in UXL's Blueprint challenge. Find our completed prototype below!
Reflection
Don't be afraid to start scared!
This design challenge was my first I've ever completed! I doubted my experience and ability to nto only do well, but place in this competition. So i was ore than shocked when NuMind was placed first for best addresing the given prompt. It has given me much excitement and inspiration to continue growing and exploring in my UX journey.
Power of collaboration and a shared vision
My partner and I worked seamlessly together, and even with aa time constraint ,we were able to create a great products. I believe this is due to our shared skills and vision for what we wanted NuMind to be. Even smaller details like colours and fonts were considered together, which really snowballed together into something I'm very proud of.
How I treat my mental health day-to-day
As someone who has come grown a lot with my own mental health, I've realized that I've slowly stopped trying to improve my mental well-being After engaging in insightful interviews, I now better understand how other students feel about their own mental health. This has highlighted untapped opportunities for my personal growth. Ongoing self-development is important and I would love to have a product like NuMind to guide me along that. I love UX exactly for this reason as it can apply to real people's lives and really help others.
