I. User Research
Our team was inspired to do a project on mental health for this hackathon as it was a topic that was prevalent in both our lives and in our peers’ lives. I conducted some background research, specifically reading peer-reviewed academic articles about college-aged students and mental health. Synthesizing this research, I found the following insights:
- Faculty members perceived students to experience higher levels of stress and display more reactions to stressors than the students' own self-perceptions → Institutions should develop ways to improve effective communication between students and professors, thereby improving academic and social efficiency of students. (R Misra)
- There is need for more support in mental health services at universities. In a study of 274 institutions, it was found that 88% of counseling services reported an increase in "severe" psychological problems over the last five years, including learning disabilities, substance abuse, and eating disorders (R Gallagher). In addition to this, one in five college-aged students meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder (P Pedrelli).
To further understand the problem at hand, we also interviewed four peers, as our core demographic for this product is undergraduate students. We asked them about questions relating to how they currently manage their mental health. From these interviews, we synthesized the following insights:
- The main motivator for not seeking help was time, affordability, and accessibility: as college students, they may be limited in the resources they can access due to transportation/financial issues and the general chaos of being in undergraduate.
- Students are unmotivated to engage in healthy coping mechanisms. Students are not only busy, but also unmotivated to engage in healthier coping mechanisms in favor of unhealthier ones such as drinking, smoking, or isolation.
Overwhelmingly, I observed that mental health is a concern for many students, whether that be for themselves, their peers, or the university as a whole.
II. Ideation
How might we... go about attempting to solve this?
We started with some rapid ideating, starting with an affinity map to organize and categorize our findings.
From ideating and creating the affinity app, we were able to see patterns in pain points and what needed to be implemented to create a truly impactful product. We used our ideations to narrow on specific features and to finalize the main flow of the product.
From here, wireframing allowed me to see visually what worked/what didn't and see how to prioritize certain content.
With my initial designs and some initial testing, I was able to find weaknesses in my design. From testing, I learned what users wanted to see and what parts did not fulfill the user journey/seemed extraneous. For example, in an early iteration, I played around with a "quick exit" option, which users reported was a bit overkill and out of scope for the application.
Using user feedback, I went on to designing in more high fidelity + handoff to developers.
III. Solution
SentiVent utilizes the Google Natural Language API in order to conduct a sentiment analysis on a user's journal entry in order to intelligently recommend resources that are affordable and accessible.
01. Design Language
I was inspired to use blue as the main color throughout this experience and primary colors throughout this experience to evoke a sense of calmness and serenity.
02. Dashboard
Users have a comprehensive view of their journal. Users can easily write a new entry, look at past entries, and see a brief overview of their analytics. The purpose of this was to 1) present the user with a visual interpretation of their mental health journey and 2) help the user pinpoint main causes that may contribute the most to their overall mood.
03. Journal Entry
When a user writes an entry that is particularly sad, SentiVent will tell the user what words have the most impact on their mood, and will thus give the user appropriate resources they can reach out to for further help. (in this case, SentiVent gives the user resources related to mental health support).
IV. Reflection
Overall, HackDavis was a great learning experience for everyone in our team. Ideating, wireframing, prototyping, and testing this project all within 24 hours was definitely a challenge! This was also my first time working as the sole UX designer in a team of engineers. It was definitely interesting to see my designs implemented into a web app that actually works - to an extent! Here are some things that I learned in this process:
- Sometimes, your designs won’t be implementable. And that’s okay! As the only designer, I really wanted to design a functional and meaningful product. I’ve learned to be more cognizant of developers’ capabilities and I’ve learned the importance of the developer-designer relationship!
- The design process is important, especially in a hackathon! I mean, I already knew this, being able to condense the design process into 24 hours was challenging- but what I got out of it was a profound appreciation for the design process. It was interesting to see what my team and I came up with in 24 hours. I wasn't just designing during this hackathon, I also led a workshop on design thinking during this hackathon, ask me about my experience with that!
our team!
V. Next Steps
Our team had high hopes and dreams for this project! Although we were quite limited in our time and resources, if we had more time we would:
- Further user-test this product to gauge usability and get more insight into what functionalities we could add to better support emotional well-being.
- Partner with local mental health services and experts so that SentiVent can be a more comprehensive mental health platform. We envisioned that SentiVent would be a platform that users can not only journal and be connected to resources, but also educate themselves on mental health issues.
- In a future iteration, we would implement the Google Maps API so that SentiVent can *actually* give recommendations based on location :)
