Return to overviewRole: UX/UI Designer
Duration: Oct 2022 - Dec 2020
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Background
Amygdapy is a mental health support platform created to help people seeking for therapy and mental health advices in a fast and discrete manner. Users can book a session call with a suited professional and find media to help when needing advice on a mental health issue.
The Challenge
People looking for mental health support that need a way to remotely find help because they want to be discrete about their issues.
We will know that to be true when we see people using our platform to find the help they need.
The Goal
An online platform that allows help seekers to find quality professionals to help them with their specific issues. They can have online consultations and be able to express their concerns in a discrete manner.
User Center Design
Using Design Thinking methodology as a guideline during the project development helped to keep users needs in mind throughout the iterative process allowed to reach the best possible solution.
Empathize
Market Research
To understand the solutions already available in the market, a competitive analysis was conducted with two companies that offer similar services. SWOT and UX analysis conducted help to understand the ux patterns, heuristics and the possible areas to be improved on my solution.
User Stories
To understand what kind of issues the user my face using the platform, some user stories were written in order to keep the user goals in mind.
User Interview
Interviews were conducted with 3 participants, to clarify the potential users needs and goals and to have a greater insight to how they seeking mental help and what are the pitfalls they face when looking for a therapist.
Goals
- Understand how users search for mental health support
- Understand users’ attitude towards an online platform to seek help
- Understand what bothers users on their current way of seeking help
Interview Insights
People struggle a great deal find treatment, and that can be dangerous to their health as it was unanimous that the wait and search to find a therapist is a trigger to their issues to the point of being life threatening. Searching and finding help should be an easy and fast task.
The search for mental health is still today a big taboo and prevents people of getting proper help. It needs to be normalized.
Define
User Personas
With the insights gained from the user interviews it was possible to craft some users personas that would translate the potential users need and goals and would be reference throughout the project development.
User Journey
To help keep the users best interest in mind, the user journeys were created. By mapping the user journeys it was possible to understand the biggest issues one might find while seeking help, and it was important to the features definition.
Ideate
Tasks Flow
Knowing what feature the users might need, it was possible to create a task flow analysis to better understand what is the user path in completing a determined task.
Information Architecture
With the user tasks created it was possible to start defining the site map. To help with that an open card sort was conducted to understand the user mental mode better and to help create a better fit structure to the users needs.
Prototype
Wireframes to prototype
The development consisted in creating low fidelity prototypes, mid fidelity prototypes and high fidelity prototypes. This is a iterative process that allowed the solution to be improved on each round.
Testing
Usability Test
A remote usability test was conducted with 6 participants with a the high fidelity clickable prototype. Users were asked to perform a given scenario tasks and their behavior was analyzed. Jakob Nielsen scale was used to assess the errors.
Goals
The goal of this test was to assess the usability of the mobile app. It is observed if participants understand the app and if they can finish functions, as searching for a Therapist and booking an initial call.
Tasks
- You been feeling overwhelmed lately and you would like to find someone to talk about your issues and how you been feeling. Using the app find someone that fits your expectations
- You were able to book a call, but you still have to wait a few days to have the call. Meanwhile you would like to find something to help you immediately, using the app what and how you find to calm down your feelings
Participants
- Wanted to start search through common treatments
- To find help went to playlist
- Think the calendar on the side is from therapist
- Got lost after booking a call
- Don’t know if booked a session or a get to know call
- Wanted to start search through common treatments
Testing Insights
With the issues collected by observing users attempting to complete the task, it was possible to go back to the prototype and improve it once more. The result can be found by scrolling down.
Style Guidelines
Design Language
The platform overall design language should translate calm and be suiting for the user, the color scheme was chosen thinking of these aspects, as well the font and language used should be simple and everyday like.
Resposive Design
Desktop
Throughout the project development it was also considering the responsive design thinking on adapting the solutions to a desktop version as well.
Final Design
Final thoughts
The project development was a great source of learning, specially dealing with a sensitive subject as mental health. The process was interactive which means it gave me the chance to repeat the process as many time as it was needed, especially when testing features to reach a good final solution.
What went well
- Putting user in the center of the development helped to keep user’s best interests in mind.
- Getting feedback from peers designers was crucial to improve the user interface and to identify details that I have not foreseen.
Bumps on the road
- It was very hard to find interviewees and people willing to talk about mental health, and how they search for therapist. I had to rely on crafting questions that could make them feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts and pitfalls during the process
The next steps on the development is to continue improving the platform by testing the new versions and release it to the market.
© Michele Marques 2023 - Product designer