Motivation

With rising numbers of patients facing mental health challenges, both patients and therapy providers encounter significant pain points—patients struggle to find the right provider and make progress, while providers face difficulties optimizing their work.

Story Interviews

We began by conducting interviews with seven key stakeholders, including psychologists, patients, and psychology students.

• How: Each teammate conducted 1-2 interviews and shared the results with the group.
• Questions: Instead of asking generalized questions about the system, we utilized a Story Interview format, focusing on obtaining a step-by-step walkthrough of recent, memorable experiences.

Key Findings

Idea Archive

We took a look at the existing relevant services to gather ideas and inspirations for our project.

Design Dimensions

Using the information gathered, we defined design dimensions to outline various ranges of design possibilities. For instance, in session communication styles, options could range from asynchronous messaging to synchronous methods like live chat, voice calls, video calls, or offline interactions. This approach helped us categorize and organize the potential design scope effectively.

Problem Statement

We used Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden’s problem statement template from their book Lean UX to clearly define the problem at the core of our project.

Our Statement:

Current mental health apps mainly focus on either mediating online therapy sessions or providing static, uniform mindfulness resources, lacking a holistic approach that integrates these elements into customized, context-driven care.

Our application will bridge these gaps by fostering continuous, meaningful rapport between providers and clients, supported by customized, context-driven resources that can be actively utilized within therapy sessions. Our initial focus will be on designing a foundational system to enable this integrated, personalized approach.

Persona

Brainstorming

We used a brainstorming method to generate ideas for the app’s features. Starting with solo brainstorming, we encouraged everyone to propose as many ideas as possible—even the silly ones. In follow-up sessions, we grouped similar ideas, voted on our favorites, and discussed the pros and cons of each, allowing us to focus on the most promising directions.

Low-fidelity sketches

We grabbed pencils and pens to create low-fidelity sketches and wireframes, designing the PC interface for professionals and the mobile interface for patients. This is also when we came up with the idea of incorporating a tangible object for patients to track their mood.

Paper Prototype Video

Here’s a video demonstrating our paper prototypes—a quick method that allowed us to conduct an informal design walkthrough with peers and kickstart our second design iteration.

Figma Prototype Video

We developed a higher-fidelity prototype in Figma, incorporating feedback from peers and insights from our own reflections. In this demo, we also have scenarios based on our previously defined personas.

Redesign - My Space

In ‘My Space’, users can manage relationships with their providers, represented as bubbles that grow larger with deeper interactions. To avoid clutter, users can archive or delete providers they no longer interact with. Initially, we designed a drag-and-drop feature to move bubbles to a trash icon or archive area, but users found it inconvenient on mobile screens. We revised this to a more traditional approach with a settings button, allowing users to check and select bubbles for archiving or deletion.

Redesign - Diary

We redesigned the ‘Write a Diary’ feature to improve usability. Initially, it had a blog-like interface with all entries listed on one screen, and adding a new entry required tapping the + icon, which opened a new window, making the interface feel cluttered. In the new design, users can immediately begin today’s diary entry by typing or recording, while past entries are accessible through a calendar icon. The diary is now linked to mood tracking, categorizing entries by mood to help users discover patterns between their mood and daily experiences. Keyword search is available in both interfaces.

Tangible Mood Tracker

In addition to Figma prototypes, we fabricated a tangible mood tracker to showcase our concept. This Tower of Hanoi comprises colored disks, each representing a mood, which patients stack daily as a visual record of their emotions. A reminder prompts users to add a disk each day, making it easy to track mood progression over time.

The tower’s data syncs with the mobile app, where users can view mood history under ‘Write a diary’ or ‘My moodboard’ For convenience, users can also log their mood remotely through the app when away from the physical setup.

Limitations

Our design concept aimed to create an ecosystem where components interact to benefit all stakeholders, including both mental health professionals and patients. This led us to focus on enhancing connectivity across the design.

The professionals' interface, however, remains simplified, with a primary focus on supporting and communicating with patients, rather than providing diagnostic tools or aiding in treatment planning. While the professional interface is included in the final design, it is not fully developed, leaving this as a future direction.

We also recognize limitations in collecting meaningful patient data to support context-driven care. Although the tangible Tower of Hanoi mood tracker captures and visualizes mood, it provides only limited, static insights.This led me to pivot on the tangible component entirely. I designed a new tangible object, Therapy Garden, as a follow-up to this project.