UX Design
Myndful
Raising awareness about mental health and coping strategies
Timeline
Octobert 2016
Teammates
Natalie Chow, Oorja Chowdhary, Zach Chun
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Adobe Experience Design (Xd)
Project Overview
Our team wanted to create an app to motivate those living with anxiety and depression because we know that it can be difficult for them to plan, get up, and start their day, as well as speak or reach out to other people about it. There are some social and cultural stigmas attached to mental health and Myndful seeks to raise awareness about how it can affect a person's daily life.
Myndful is an android app that encourages users to try out new coping activities by asking about and tracking the user’s mood each day.
Process
At the beginning of the 24 hours, we began with a discussion and quickly settled on the idea of mental health. Our group lacked personal experience and knowledge in this area, so we spent the first couple of hours researching. We looked into what was mental health and what were some strategies for coping. From the beginning, we wanted to allow users to be able to control how coping mechanisms were given since we didn't want to make too many assumptions about user wants and needs.
From there, we generated a list of coping mechanisms and sorted them into three categories: physical, mental and social. Our group spent a lot of time discussing whether or not there should be gamification, but we ultimately decided to go a simpler route. Another reason was because we wanted to avoid negative results. We wondered:
- what would happen if the user didn't interact with the app or didn't want to play?
- How would it show inaction and how could those results still be positive?
After settling on a simple design, we identified tools such as being able to watch daily progress, gauging the user's mood at the beginning and end of the day, and managing their coping mechanisms. Ultimately, we wanted to help users find strategies that worked for them. As a result, users are able to rate whether or not they liked the suggested strategy. Then, there would be badges for them to see what they liked and a chart showing what category they seemed to like more.
Myndful aims at helping users learn more about themselves. It provides strategies and goals without being wholly intrusive and forcing the user to interact. For example, if the user doesn't complete the day's strategy, it's simply cycled back in and offered another time. Myndful works with positive reenforcement and brightening the user's day one task at a time.
Once we had defined the scope of our design, we were able to move on to screens. The onboarding sequence changes depending on whether or not they are a returning user, and then the app behaves the same from then on. There aren't too many screens for the user to interact with to keep interactions simple and not intrusive.
