MindLyte

Understand how student currently deal with mental health crises

We distributed anonymous surveys to college students on social media and conducted 4 interviews with participants who volunteered to share their personal experiences with us, as well as a interviewing a confidential student-run hotline on campus.

Main Findings

• Common coping strategies that participants preferred include reaching out to a family or friends, listening to music, exercising, etc.

• More than half of the participants felt a need for more support dealing with emotional struggles.

• Lack of motivation, high costs & long wait time for mental health services prevented individuals from seeking assistance.

As we were analyzing the findings, we found that there were two types of users:

Visualizing two types of target users

Based on two types of users we identified through user research, we created two user personas and journey maps to better visualize and understand the different needs of our target users.

Persona 1: Jessica is able to identify her emotional crisis and is exploring different strategies to relieve her stress. (Internal Support Seeker)

Persona 2: Andres has trouble identifying the source of his emotions and hopes to get immediate external support. (External Help Seeker)

Map out user flows & potential features

In order to address the two different types of user needs we identified in user research, we decided to create a customizable safety system that provides both:

Immediate support resources: hotlines & emergency contact 👉 for external support seekers

A customizable safety plan: a personalized package of coping strategies 👉 for internal support seekers

This will ensure that users who seek immediate external help can get instant support, while those prefer working through a set of coping exercises on their own also have that option available.

By learning from existing mental health apps such as My3 and MoodTools, we gained valuable insights into commonly effective features such as social contacts, reasons to live, etc. This helped us explore ways to organize resources in a more easily accessible manner.

Building the structure with Low-Fi Wireframes

Using the design sketches as a guide, we then developed low-fi wireframes to outline the page's layout and structure. We integrated specific features that offered users both immediate support resources and a customizable safety plan comprising various coping strategies.

Insights & Iterations

After creating the wireframes, I conducted two rounds of qualitative user testing to evaluate our design solution. Feedback was notably positive, with customization recognized as the key.

“ I like this concept a lot and am excited to try out the features when I suffer from anxiety”

“ The features are intuitive and seems very accessible to college students“

“ …Love how the app allows me to customize the plan and add resources that I personally find helpful”

We also received a lot of valuable feedback for improvements:

Feedback 1: Wording of button texts like “suicidal“ appears ambiguous and confusing to users

💡 Avoid ascribing emotions to users and instead focus on objective actions and behaviors

Feedback 2: Displaying the same “Nice Job“ page at the end of the safety plan was not motivating to users as we expected

💡 Replace it with statistical feedback to motivate users through positive reinforcement

Feedback 3: Default safety plans are not helpful as users have diverse needs

💡→ Remove default safety plans and instead focus on guiding users to create their own personalized plans

Other major changes that we made based on user feedback include:

• Enable users to upload photos and videos to the “Reasons to Live“ section in addition to text

• Prioritize the breathing exercise in the safety plan

• Allow users to access individual strategies without having to navigate the entire plan

• Enhance the resource list to increase users' awareness of local support options

Mid-Fi Wireframes

(Since the app was still in development, our final deliverable remained at mid-fidelity to ensure consistency with the app's overall look and feel.)

After gaining insights from user feedback, we prioritized aspects that significantly affect usability and incorporated those feedback from user testing in our updated prototype. The final solution includes two major user flows - creating a safety plan and going through the plan.

User Flow 1: Setting up a safety plan

1. Add New Plan

The home page features a customizable list of resources providing immediate support.

Users can create their own plan, either building it from scratch or starting with a pre-developed template.

2. Music, Warning Signs & Coping Strategies

Once users determine the plan's context, they can add preferred music to accompany the plan.

Users can add self-identified warning signs and customize their coping strategies.

3. Contacts & Plan Preview

Users can add new contacts to their safety plan or use existing ones from their resource list.

They can review and adjust the plan before saving. The saved plans will appear on the home page.

User Flow 2: Walk through an existing safety plan

1. Start the Plan

Users start by clicking the plan on the home page.

They can preview all steps included and navigate to a specific section without going through the entire plan.

2. Breathing, Music, & Warning Signs

Users begin the plan with breathing exercises with audio guidance.

They can also play their own music for relief.

Next, they will identify warning signs of their mental health crisis to increase emotional awareness.

3. Things I’m Grateful For

Users are prompted to actively recall things that bring them joy in life. They can also gain support by reviewing items they’ve added in the past.

4. Reaching Out

Users are then encouraged to reach out for additional support if needed.

Users can use default text templates that they can send instantly or write their own message.

5. Finish the Plan

Finally, users are prompted to assess their feelings and whether they feel a need for extra support.

Challenges

Determining the proper language to use in emergency situations

By interviewing a confidential student-run hotline on campus, we learned to prioritize direct, straightforward language, and avoided euphemisms during mental health emergencies. This helped us extensively revised our scripts and in-app texts to ensure appropriate, non-offensive interaction with potential users.

Evaluating the actual usability of our design was challenging

As directly testing with users in crisis was unethical and impossible, we focused on engaging users throughout the design process from early ideation to prototyping. By continuously integrating user feedback, we were able to create a user-centered experience that users believe will effectively serve as a reliable source of mental support.

Next Steps

Due to time constraints, we were not able to address all user feedback in our design. Some possible future directions include:

• Research and design contents for recommended safety plans

• Create an onboarding experience to guide users setting up their safety network preferences 

• Expand the resource list with more available resources 

• Conduct additional usability tests with more users to validate key features