Shiyao
Forward is a self-care mobile app that aims to make therapy accessible to everyone. Focus on sharing the latest techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and neuroscience, the app aims to reframe people's default negative way of thinking so they can make positive changes in their life.
Traditional in-person therapy is important, however, there are still many people struggling with mental health due to reasons below:
1. Hard to Commit: In modern world, everyone is busy. Many people are still struggling to reach work-life balance, and their busy schedules leave them no chance to reserve time for themselves, not to mention seeing a therapist.
2. Expensive: Traditional in-person therapy can be expensive for people who need a regular check-in. People may feel frustrated and rather spend this cost at somewhere else. This is especially true for low-income family.
3. Conservative Attitude: Some people still feel like seeing a therapist is not something they are proud of. In fact, some still associated with the feeling of "ashamed" or "I'm not good enough", believing that the only reason why they need to see a therapist is because they are problematic. For introverts, they feel painful to open up themselves fully in front of any stranger.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the common technique adapted by many therapists which to ask people to train their minds by writing down reflective journal, find the triggers of negative thoughts and interfere with the default thinking pattern. Especially during pandemic, a CBT app may-be one of the most meaningful products to many people. Although this app is not intended to replace the in-person therapy session, it does bring some benefits that the traditional therapy does not provide. Specifically, this apps solved above problems by incorporating:
1. Daily Check-In and CBT Journal: The Daily Check-In feature enables the users to check in their moods and gets proper advice anywhere at any time, without the need to make an appointment first. The Journal feature enables users to practice the parts of thinking they want to focus on. The best being, it doesn't cost you more than 10-15 minutes to finish a check-in.
2. Free Access to Library & Resources: The "Explore" feature updates new content weekly, enable the users to search or to explore topics of their interest. Listen to the professional CBT therapists advice at 0 cost.
3. Personalized Journey: Personalized journey. Allow users to revisit a mood they had on a certain date, or review the mood summary of the month and get to know what tends to make them sad. It helps the users to be reflective and see themselves more of human-being: Who has up and downs. It also allow them to see how they grow over time and would give them a sense of confidence.
I started my process by trying out different CBT apps that have best ratings on the market. I chose Bloom, Sayana, Remente. All these CBT apps provide great user experience, while having something in common, they also have their differences and highlights, for example: Bloom app has a very easy-understanding user interface and great selections of resources, especially the pre-recorded interactive video sessions. Sayana has outstanding and delightful illustrations but are more text heavy (use questions prompts instead of video session), and the best part is that it has a community feature, where people can share their journey with each other. Remente is like a balance of Bloom and Sayana, it has written check-in but also tons of great video resources that you can watch.
I have conducted 18 questions for user survey, and got 40 participants who have attended and answered my questions. Some key takeaways from the user survey are that:
• 65% are females
• 70% are 15-30 year old
• 63% never see a therapist even they are struggling with depressive thoughts
• 80% participants would like to reserve some time for self-care on daily basis
• Most wish it takes 5-15 minutes, no longer than 30 minutes
I found it useful for this app that most people would love to be reminded to take some time off for themselves each day.
Due to the fact that mental health is a relatively sensitive subject, not many people were willing to open up about it. However, I got one participant who's interested in my project and would love to follow up with me. I have created a list of in-depth questions for her, and also ask here to share her opinions using the Bloom app.
Here are key takeaways:
• The participant was familiar with seeing a therapist but never used an app and was willing to use it
• Thinks seeing a therapist is great but often too hard to keep it up due to financial concern as well as no time and energy
• Likes to write things down in a quiet environment and be reflective - but sometimes forget to do so
• Doesn't always feel like sharing - takes time to trust a therapist
* Would prefer something handy and convenient
After gathering all the quantitative data and qualitative data, I have moved on to creating user personas. Based on what I learned from my users, I have created three types of different personas. One full time worker, one full time student, and a single-mom. Although they all have different personalities and struggles in life, they do share something in common: They are pretty sensitive, observant, and empathetic individuals. But the cons being that they are easy to fall into self-doubt. Their main goals and needs are to feel validated, feel valued and feel motivated.
I then moved on from creating user personas to creating user stories. User stories helped me to brainstorm every possible roles that are going to use this app, it helped me understand what their needs are and what they were specifically looking for when comes to using a therapy app. I have listed them below.
For the task flows, I tried to come up as many tasks as possible about how a user would use this therapy app. I have came up with "Daily Check-In", "Listen to a Session about Boundaries in Relationship", "Practice Gratitude", "Find Out the mood summary from last month and what caused it", "update passcode", "Asking for help", and etc. It helps me to understand how many steps ideally a user needs to take in order to accomplish a task.
I started sketching out ideas for the app. I wanted the layout to be simple and easy to interpret, so I tried not too put too much content on each screen.
Later on I converted each screen into digital screen, and tested the digital wireframe a few times with friends. They like the way it looks and wants to see what it becomes at the final products. With their encouragements, I decided to move on with this wireframe.
By the time of creating the wireframes, I already had a big picture in my mind of how to style it.
Moodboard: Since mental health is all about sharing vulnerabilities, I want people to feel relaxing and soft as much as possible. I search for the images that inspired me, I want the overall feeling of this app to look therapeautic.
Color Choice: Although the survey shows that most users who are going to use this app are likely going to be females, but I want it to be gender friendly. So I decided to go with neutral tone, #EEEDE7. After some careful research online, I wanted the main colors to be #66A1A1 and #F0D68E, which adds some brightness but are not too harsh or saturated. I want the overall colors to be refreshing and calming at the same time.
Logo & Name: I have brainstormed many names, but decided to go with "Forward" because it simply aligns with the core value of CBT, which is to train people to think things differently so that they can move forward on their life. I want the logo to be airy and breathable, and came up with the concept of spring breeze.
Font Choice: After doing some research, I decided that I want to choose Urbane rounded for the logo, the rest of the text in the app will stay Avenir. Both urbane and Avenir are modern, clean, and soft looking with a little sense of openness and playfulness.
The big work begins. I worked on the prototypes for a week, carefully arranged the layouts and inserted the style into the wireframes. After seeing how it turned out for the first few screens, I have decided to stay this style throughout the design.
Click Image below to walk through the interactive prototype! - Link will open in an external window.
I've conducted usability test with four participants in total, two males two females. During the process, I asked them to complete tasks as well as encouraged them to think out-loud. Their feedbakcs are very precious in that I did not see with my own eyes, and after the usability testing I learned that I have so many blind-spots that need to be treated better. Below are a glimpse of the usability testing result -
I have included their feedbacks in a feedback capture grid, which helps me to clearly see what are the areas that need improvement, what are the areas that can be pushed to even greater potentials. Overall, my four participants all like the design and said they would love to install this app on their phone. They found it especially meaningful during this pandemic.
I have learned a lot from this project. I'm satisfied with the results but also knowing that there are much more room for improvement, which I am happy to continue iterating in the future. Here are a few precious things that I learned from this case study:
User stories, helped me to be more empathetic with different target-audiences and their needs. While this is important, I forgot there should be only a few focuses - and a good way to do this is to list them from high to low priority, and also knowing the rationale behinds it. I definitely was a little too ambitious, believing the app is going to solve many people's problems - while I forgot people all live in different situations and may have different needs. What I would done to improve my product is to select a few important user stories and stick with them.
One of the feedbacks I received asked if it's possible to include a community feature on the app, where people can share their moods and how they improve their moods, that way the users would feel more connected and willing to use this app. While this not necessarily fall into my project scope (and the fact I didn't want it to turn into a 'social app’), it's worth considering. An important aspect of product design is also to think how can it continue to live and be helpful in the future. People's needs may change over-time and I need to stay open-minded to absorb different opinions.
Although majority of the users really like the app, doesn't mean they are all satisfied with the visual. Visual plays a psychologically important part of the product design. It would trick people into thinking or feeling certain moods. Apparently, this style looks "calming" to me and to some other users, but I also got feedbacks complaining it's too "muted" and even "sad". Some users wish to see more vibrant colors so they can feel more up lifting. I think the next step or what I would have done differently is to do different versions of styles and present A/B testings, so let people choose between different styles. I was still too self-centered in the visual design process - I went with what I believe is good, but not what the user think is good. But it also made me more self-awared and I will be more careful with visual decision next time.
