Blossom
Blossom is an easy-to-access tool to help struggling students build a quick daily routine to de-stress and educate them on how to manage stress and feelings of depression.
Duration
11 weeks
Oct - Dec 2021
Team
Working in a team of 5
Skills
User Research,
Usability Testing,
Wireframing,
High-Fi Prototype
My role
UI/UX Designer
Problem Overview
In the United States, there is a significant unmet demand for mental health services among colleges and universities; roughly one-fifth to one-third of students experience mental health symptoms. Although seeking therapy is a standard treatment, there is only one therapist for every 750 college students, with an average wait time of 4 days, which shows the imbalance of mental health resources and the demand from students.
Since it is a sensitive topic and people often feel uncomfortable talking about their struggles, many students lack knowledge of mental health, which causes misconceptions about it.
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Thus, we seek to address and advocate for mental health awareness through design by providing reliable knowledge through an easy-access tool that would allow college students to achieve mental stability.
Design Process
User research
User Surveys & Interviews
To develop a better understanding of what challenges students are facing with mental health problems and how we can improve their experience, we also conducted interviews with students and professionals and created a survey that receive 72 respondents.
Research Insights
Mental health counselor at UW
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Due to understaffing problem, the mental health counselor at UW often prioritizes students who have more severe illnesses than the other students
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The mental health counselor at UW pointed out that journaling is a tool that can help manage one’s mental health
College Student
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69.4% of our survey respondents said they don’t have a journaling habit even though the counselor mentioned it is a great way to help people manage stress
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Students often use Google to search for answers about their mental health and the results increase their anxiety and depressive feelings
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Students pointed out that they experienced long wait time when they sought out helps from the counselor, and often they did not receive help on time
Users' Needs
From our research, we found out that students hope to have
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More accessible mental health services in college
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an easy-to-use tool for their mental health
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More reliable sources to answer their mental health questions
Competitive Analysis
We researched some existing digital and in-person solutions that are available for college students. While we saw some great services that are provided to students, there are also limitations with those solutions.
1. Digital apps
Since the counselor mentioned that journaling is a good way for people to manage stress, we decided to focus our research on some journaling apps. We analyzed two mental health journaling apps: Reflectly and Daylio
2. Mental Health Counselor
Another existing service, UW’s LiveWell program, offers on-campus mental health resources such as peer health and suicide intervention but is only available from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Mondays to Fridays. The availability of UW’s LiveWell program is a significant weakness because it is a service that may not adhere to students’ schedules. Also, there is a small finite amount of counselors available for each student, meaning the wait time for in-person mental health guidance is long.
Takeaways
Some main takeaways I learned from the competitive analysis are:
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People have different habits for journaling; thus, we should offer multiple options to cater to their preferred journaling method
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Other than some mood-tracking and analysis features, there aren't other mental health resources in the apps.
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Getting help from mental health counselors can be time-consuming, and students might not be able to get the help they need immediately.
How might we...
How might we help college students who are stressed or feeling depressed feel more at ease without taking up too much of their time?
Personas
Initial Design
Based on the research and users' needs, we created our initial design which includes three key features: daily activity, media resources, and journaling.
User Testing
With our first version of animated Figma prototypes, we continued to conduct 5 usability test with college students. The purpose of the tests were to assess the usability of the app’s interface design, information flow, and information architecture.
Insights
Our user testing revealed
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Our current implementation lacks a system that gives users the incentive to use the app daily
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Interviewees found that distinguishing between the guiding question and journaling page is essential for their specific roles
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Daily activity can create a more personalized interactive activity
Design Changes
We made some design changes using the valuable feedback from our user tests and interviews.
Change 1 : Adding a reward system
We add a reward system that gives users the incentive to use the app daily. The reward system will consist of a flower on the home screen, and each day the user completes the daily activity and check-in, they will earn one petal as the “reward”. The goal is to make the flower bloom, earning all seven petals in one week. Additionally, as the user continues to use the app each day, they can keep a streak. A streak counts how many consecutive days a user has been keeping up with the app usage.
Change 2 : Adding Predefined Categories to Guiding Questions page
Another change we made was adding predefined categories for the guiding questions page. Initially, the guiding question page only contained a free-response textbox which was similar to the journaling page that users need to write. Having predefined categories allows users to select a range of options that fulfill the guiding question. we want to ensure that users can select an option of writing or picking categories to journal their emotions.
Change 3 : Changing the order of daily screens
We also changed the order of the daily activity by placing the check-in at the front before the daily activity and video. The purpose of this order is to make the interactive activities more personalized. For example, once the user logs in their mood on the check-in screen, the app will choose the following video and activity based on their mood. This feature would make the interactive experience more relatable to the user, targeting their needs.
Final Design
Daily Check-in
The daily check-in feature allows the user to document their mood. Users can easily record their attitudes by having the three emotion buttons instead of writing their emotions. With this information, at the end of each week, the app can recommend different resources such as videos, podcasts, music, and exercises that catered to the student’s feelings of the week.
Daily Activity
The daily activity feature includes an activity to help people destress. The app would randomly give the users one activity to do for the activity, such as stretching, listening to a song, or coloring. These exercises are small activities that take users just a few minutes. The app will present proper activities tailored to a given emotion based on their current mood.
Video of the Day
The video of the day feature provides users with a one to two-minute video that focuses on providing the user with advice and tips. The video can provide quick and concise educational information to the user. The video will be related to the user's current mood they input. They can also skip the videos by clicking on the Skip button.
Petals System
The petal system encourages the user to use the app daily on the home screen. Users can get the most value from the app features by ingraining this reward system. The feature allows users to earn a petal every time the user logs in and complete their daily activities. Users who consecutively log in to the app will achieve a complete flower with seven petals, showing the continuous progression of the week.
Mixed Medias (Article/Podcast/Video)
The Learn page stores a collection of databases containing various articles, podcasts, and videos. These resources are provided for users to learn about specific topics regarding mental health. These sources are from credible resources to help young adults gain more knowledge and avoid misleading information.
Journaling - Main Page and Random Prompts
The journaling main page has a weekly calendar in which users can select the date to see their mood entry for the day. The users will also see a line graph of their last week’s mood progress to keep track of their mood.
By clicking on the journaling button, the users can choose to do a random prompt for journaling. The random prompt has predefined categories to allow users to easily answer the prompt by selecting a range of options. The users can also add their own categories.
Journaling - Make an Entry
The users can also choose to make an entry for journaling. They have the option to do it using texts, pictures, drawings, or audio recordings.
Reflection
Since mental health problem is a sensitive topic, it's important to be mindful of the language we use in the survey and during the interview.
User testing is a helpful step for us to get feedback from the users and understand their needs better. For future improvements, we hope to conduct more or another round of user testing and iterate along the way to reveal areas of confusion and uncover opportunities to improve the overall user experience