iFeel@UofT.Fall 2022
Mental health app for UofT Students
How might we help UofT students improve their mental health to better navigate their student life?
I worked in a team of 6, in collaboration with UofT’s Innovation Hub, to create an app that allows students to track their mood, receive insights and recommended actionable solutions, and find the right resources within a few clicks. The project falls under "Whole Student Development" domai.
Given my previous background in dealing with data, I led the process of data analysis. I have also conducted user interviews and usability tests.
Role
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User interviews
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Data analysis
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Usability Testing
Tools
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Figma
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Procreate
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Microsoft Excel
Design Process
User Research & Analysis
01
Primary Research Questions
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What do students think of UofT’s current mental health services?
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What is the students’ perception on mental health and help-seeking?
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What is students’ level of awareness when it comes to mental health?
Major Findings
01
Use of UofT mental health resources
Only 16% of UofT students (12 ou of 74) use UofT mental health support
03
Barriers to seeking mental health support
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Social stigma
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Affordability
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Self-reliance
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Lack of knowledge on available resources
02
Self-assessed mental health quality
31% of UofT students maintain a fair mental health quality
Affinity diagram
Problem Statement
“Although UofT offers a multitude of mental health resources, students still don’t use them and prefer coping strategies, such as going out and exercising, instead of seeking professional help.”
Persona
Meet Johanna...
Using the collected data, we created a representative persona that we called Johanna the Gamer. As her nickname insinuates, she is passionate about gaming but uses it as an escape from reality and avoids facing her problems. She has a fair self-assessed mental health quality.
How can we help her understand the importance of mental health and regulate her unhealthy coping mechanisms?
Ideation
We have diverged to come up with as many ideas as possible, then converged to review, filter, and sort them depending on their feasibility and impact.
Wireframes & Evaluation
The goal of this stage is to sketch the ideas that were selected in the previous stage order to enable Johanna to track her mood and get related insights, open up and share her thoughts and feelings anonymously, and find resources easily.
Low-fidelity Prototype - Mood log
Low-fidelity Prototype - Vent Room
After creating the lean evaluation protocol, I conducted, along with my team members, a total of 4 evaluations using the low-fidelity prototypes.
Lean Evaluation Outcome
Participants liked...
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Generated insights after the mood log
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Anonymous venting
Participants would like to ...
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Change the sequence of insights display
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Add more features to the venting room
The received remarks were used to add more components to the online community feature (UTPeeps), and change the sequence of insights display to make the process less lengthy.
Medium-fidelity Prototype - Mood log
Medium-fidelity Prototype - Vent Room
My team members and I have conducted a total of 6 evaluations of our clickable prototype.
We provided the participants with 4 tasks, each one related to a feature (mood log, online community, accessing resources, and starting a journey).
The first step was a 5-second test and the second was observation while they executed the given tasks, both were followed by a semi-structured interview to further understand their interaction with the app.
Evaluation Outcome
Participants liked...
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How easy it is to use the app
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How quick they accomplished the tasks
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Short & helpful insights
Participants disliked ...
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Triggering words
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Overwhelming features, particularly when dealing with negative emotions
Next steps
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Declutter screens and only keep necessary components.
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Consult a mental health professional to review the app to change and/or remove triggering content.
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Add a disclaimer under the online community posts to advise users that comments aren’t medical advice.
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Further develop gamification features, a rewards system in particular.
Takeaways
Working under pressure is...
challenging but also beneficial in the sense that it allowed me to better focus on what aspects of the project are truly important instead of trying to include as many features as possible
Presenting in front of industry professionals...
and getting their feedback helped me and my team stay grounded when it comes to our design choices
Interviewing users...
at different stages helped me look at the project from different angles and gather new insights each time
Working in a team...
has helped me look at problems from different perspectives. It has increased my empathy and taught me how to navigate challenges easily.
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