Designed an art therapy app that helps managemental health concerns using creative outlets.
TEAM
Team of 4 - All UX Designers
MY ROLE
Research: Secondary Research, Interviews, Card Sorting, Affinity Map
Design: User flows, sketches, lo-fi and hi-fi wireframing, prototyping
TOOLS
Figma & Miro
DEVICES
IOS Application
What is the problem?
Lack of creative tools to manage stress & mental health concerns
It is difficult for people to take care of their mental health due to the lack of time and resources. Other reasons range from people yielding to the social stigma surrounding mental health, to many people prioritising money and time over mental health.
With growing societal expectations and responsibilities, more and more people are finding it difficult to keep their mental health in check. They often feel stressed, agitated or exhausted from external factors.
How might we break the stigma behind therapy and educate & encourage users to use art therapy as an outlet to reduce stress & address mental health concerns?
How is creative art therapy going to help?
Creative activity can reduce stress and have a positive effect on mental health, regardless of artistic experience or talent.
We researched on several wellness apps out there and most work on either food, Fitness or Basic Therapy. Our research showed there was a void for Creative Art Therapy tools in the market. Art therapy outlets include visual art, music and dance.
According to a 2016 study published in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, less than an hour of creative activity can reduce your stress and have a positive effect on your mental health, regardless of artistic experience or talent.
What is the solution?
Healing through creative arts!
We realised there was a lack of effective Creative Art Therapy tools in the market. Thus, we aimed to design a solution to address the problem, so that it is easy for our targeted audience to use an app on-the-go and therefore not be limited by schedules, locations or budget.
We designed an app to help overcome stress and anxiety in the daily lives of people aged 20-35, using Creative Art Therapy with special consideration to concerns about money and timing. According to our research, this demographic of people experience some of the most stressful situations and struggle with many mental health issues, so we wanted to create an outlet to help reduce the aforementioned problems anywhere and any time.
What did the user research show?
Most people find therapy necessary but it is quite expensive and hard to schedule. They need something that can help them cope on a day to day basis.
Competitive Analysis
Offering various creative outlets & the ability to save their work
In addition to the above research findings, my team and I analysed the 3 competitor apps in the market right now. We found that almost none of them offered more than one form of art therapy and almost all lacked proper navigation and registration elements. Moreover, none of the apps gave users the option to save their work.
Thus we decided to create an app that allows users to pick between different creative outlets and allows them to save their work.
User Interviews + Affinity Map
The interviewees were more likely to use the app if they had the option to pick between different activities and were able to save their work and connect with a therapist if required.
The research above highlighted that an overall better navigation and registration process was required. However, I also conducted 12 interviews to identify the users motivations and goals. I asked the questions highlighted below to identify what what factors influence the users decision making and then organise my data through affinity mapping to find the overlapping themes.
Research Questions:
What creative activities do you enjoy?
Overall, how would you rate your mental health from 1 - 5?
How often do you experience anxiety?
How do you regulate your emotions/thoughts?
How often do you experience mental health issues?
What are some outlets that you like to engage in that help relieve stress or anxiety?
What are your thoughts on therapy?
User Persona: Meet Dennis!
Most wellness app users are, “need-based users". Thus, the main question that arises is how might we break the stigma behind therapy and educate & encourage users to use art therapy as an outlet to reduce stress & address mental health concerns.
Storyboard
We designed a storyboard to help understand the larger context in which our app will be used and showcased Dennis's journey.
User flow
We then had to focus on one specific aspect of the app to create our user path.
Download the app from the App store.
Sign up using a google account
Go through the onboarding process
Start from Homepage
Select Activities or Happy Face
Select “Mandala”
Select In-App
Select Design
Click “Done”
User Testing Results & Improvements
4 Major Design Improvements
Added mood filters to the home page
Based on mentor feedback, we needed an element that made our app stand out and also enforce the importance of taking some time out to breathe and de-stress. So we decided to create a virtual stress ball within the app, that would allow users to calm their mind when they are stressed.
Added an emergency button
We identified that during testing the most common feedback we received was that of adding an emergency button/page that would all the user to get in touch with a specialist or 911 immediately considering our app is focused towards improving mental health.
Added a virtual stress ball
Based on user feedback, we decided to add mood filters to the homepage, that would allow users to choose how they feel and then the app would show them the recommended art therapy options or connect them with a specialist.
Designed online and at-home activities
Based on the feedback from the interviews conducted, we realised that some users prefer to engage in creative activities that they can physically create and do not like working on devices. So we created an at-home option, that would allow users to be creative in their own space.
Learnings
Setbacks & Modifications to Design
In the first month, after all the research was conducted, we created a few mock ups of the low and mid fidelity prototypes.
Some of the issues that were highlighted were that users were initially concerned of the app is the functionality of the mood filters because it wasn’t animated during testing. They also mentioned that they didn’t know what a mandala was so we added information in the form of icon/pop-up screen. They also wondered if music playlists are customisable by users themselves because the prototype didn't highlight that feature.
Conclusion & Future Takeaways
For this project, I had the opportunity to work in a team; to create an app that was original and addressed the problems that individuals face on a daily. I did have a few takeaways for myself that I learned throughout this process:
Keep Iterating & Testing: I realised the importance of iterating each prototype and conducting usability tests at every step, as we were designing an app that requires the utmost sensitivity & has to address the users need at every step, while providing them with the best experience.
