Our class assignment for our final was very open ended, we were instructed to make something to better the world. My team had been discussing this project for a long time and were overjoyed by this opportunity. Recovery International is a non-profit organization that helps people learn cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to manage stress, depression, anxiety and anger. In-person and web meetings are led through the organization once a week.
Recovery International was designed to achieve accessible mental health through peer lead, in-person meetings. We noticed a disconnect between this mission and the ability for users to access our resources due to limited geographic locations, meeting availability, time commitment, and covid restrictions.
This problem can be improved by creating a mobile app that guides users through the recovery method and provides an opportunity to give examples and get feedback outside of meeting time. Our app helps you learn and give examples on your own time as well as show you your mental health progression over time. Users can customize a support system, either by participating anonymously through our in app forum, or inviting friends and family to participate.
Our team consisted of 3 individuals including myself. We shared responsibilities in the initial research phases but then broke off to express our personal talents. I was tasked with the overall design of this project as well as a rebranding effort to give Recovery International a new brand identity.
•Trello
•Figma
•Miro
•Google Docs
•Google Survey
The design process for our Recovery app was shaped by principles of design thinking methodology. We worked through these steps to achieve our end goal of creating a functional app to guide users through the Recovery method to achieve better mental health in a safe and user friendly environment.
Our goal with the survey was to discover our users learning styles, coping mechanisms, familiarity with cognitive behavioral therapy and their experience with tracker apps. We also wanted to see which features they used most in a tracking application.We had a total of 20 respondents.
Our goal for user interviews was to gain insight into our users' stress level and discover how they cope with this stress. We wanted to understand how they prefer to learn complex information, and if they’ve used any technology to track other behaviors. We conducted a total of 6 users interviews.
We took a look at some other applications that offer solutions to improving mental health to see what kind of features they have and what users like about them.
Opportunities- Overall we found that most of these apps were heavily developed around mediation and breathing techniques. We saw an opportunity to develop a solution that offered another coping skill for users to deal with life’s stressors. These apps also all cost money, which we noticed as a huge pain-point for users because they don’t mention at first that you have to pay for access to the full content.
We took all the information from our surveys and interviews and created two personas. Our goal with two personas was to create an app that stuck with the original spirit of the RI method, but was also easy enough to teach new users the method through mini lessons.
Meet Steve, a long time user of the Recovery method who is struggling with the concerns of attending an in person meeting during Covid. He wants to have a safe socially distant environment but also misses the weekly support from his Recovery group.
Meet Amanda, a young web developer who loves gaming and healthy competition. She lacks the time to attend weekly meetings but still wants to learn healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her crushing anxiety. She is looking for something new and wants a more in depth program that guides her towards better mental health.
We decided to focus mainly on Amanda, because she needs the most help and guidance as she begins her journey for better mental health. We also wanted to appeal to more users and expand RI’s reach. We felt Amanda forced us to focus on brand expansion.
We started by combining the features we liked from our competitors but also saw new opportunities to alleviate Amanda and Steve’s pain points by creating something that wasn't already available.
To visualize this effort we used the I like, I wish, and What if method to ideate creative solutions to aid in our design
Next we voted on features we liked the most and moved them into a feature prioritization matrix. To helpwhat we felt our users most needed and organized them based upon difficulty. This helped inform what we would spend most of our time designing.
Finally we created a user flow to help us visualize Amanda’s journey through our application to help us identify any potential pain points that could arise during this process.
As we began sketching solutions which I will discuss in the next section I began to work on the rebranding and UI design effort. We knew we wanted a whole new look for Recovery starting with the logo.
Next we moved on to find UI inspiration and ideate words that best described our new brand identity. We voted on words we felt best describe what we were attempting to create after several rounds of discussion and eliminations. We settled on
I gathered some inspiration and we fell in love with a watercolor look. We loved the layering and rich texture of watercolor and decided to take our design in that direction. With some research I discovered that green light was the most calming light color and I knew our design should be green focused to convey a calming, serene feel with the clear representation of personal growth which is a key theme in our design.
Below are a few elements that came together to create this design
We began by sketching our solutions and ideas independently. We created initial wireframes that focused on the onboarding process as well as the mini lessons.
With our app we had several areas we needed to create solutions for. Our motivation came directly from our survey and interview responses.
Next we discussed our solutions and combined them to create a cohesive design to facilitate Amanda and Steve’s needs. We did basic user testing on our low fidelity wireframes to test navigation and comprehension of the mini lessons.
During this process we conducted many tests to make sure that our users were truly guiding our design. Every test yielded new insight and more iterations. In total we ran 4 user tests for the app and 1 for the web page.
Our goal with the final round of testing was to see if the design caused any pain points with users. We tested the overall navigation, and the comprehension of the mini lessons. We found the users were able to navigate through and felt they had enough guidance to practice the RI method and thoroughly understand what it was actually for. A few pain points did arise during this process and we quickly came up with solutions.
Considering the 3 week timeline I believe we work well and created a truly comprehensive application. I feel we provided a safe and calming environment to help Amanda and Steve create a space that keeps them calm, safe, and emotionally supported as they move forward on their personal growth journey for better mental health.
