Cheeria
Your mental health companion
OVERVIEW
The project aims to help people with mental problems get better. The idea is to create a platform where people can do different activities that can help to re-shape their negative thoughts and behaviors that would subsequently affect their mental conditions. This app is mainly targeted at teenagers in Indonesia.
ROLE
Product designer, Visual designer, UI/UX designer, User discovery and researcher
DURATION
3 months (January - March 2021
TOOLS USED
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
In order to achieve the best user experience, I broke down the development into several stages.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Every day, people are facing difficult problems that can lead to different mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. Although it is very important to keep a healthy mental state, they are often neglected due to fears of discrimination and stigmatic behaviors circling around society. It prevents them to seek help that eventually can lead to unwanted actions, such as self-harm and suicide attempts. In fact, out of 6.1% of Indonesia's population aged 15 years and older who were having depression, only 9% of the population group received medication for their conditions.
TARGET MARKET
As a country with a strong traditional and religious belief, Indonesians see mental illness as some kind of spirit and evil doings. Many mentally ill are said to be possessed by spirits and capable of special powers and sometimes even revered. Other than that, there is also a strong stigma circulating in the community which causes people with mental health problems to experience discrimination.
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Hence, the target market for this app would be Indonesians who are experiencing mental health problems but are unable to get help from their communities.
SOLUTION
Making an app that helps people who have mental health conditions to find peace and feel heard without needing to feel bad because of the discrimination given.
I. EMPATHIZE
RESEARCH
To understand the problem, even more, I needed to do more research. Here, I gathered supporting data to assist me in developing my app.
1. I gathered 40 stories from people with mental health issues from the "What I Wish They Knew" Website. Here, they wrote their feelings and their struggles when they were experiencing their problems. Here are some of the things that I can deduce from the stories.​
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They mentioned that some of the reasons why they did not ask for help were because of judgment, stereotypes, and stigmatic behavior that people have towards other people with mental health issues.
2. According to the Michigan School of Psychology, one of the best therapies used for anxiety, depression, and other psychological conditions is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It works by reshaping your negative and destructive thoughts and feelings into more realistic and positive thoughts.
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According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), many studies have found that self-directed CBT can be very effective. However, only a few people know the importance of these techniques.
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3. I also conducted interviews with 5 people, asking about their experience while having an issue with their mental health. The results are as such:
4. So far there is an app about mental health in Indonesia called E-Jiwa. It is a government application aiming to indicate mental health diseases as early as possible using a set of questions. The problem with this app is that it is only available for androids. Moreover, it only gives the result for the current users' mental state, without educating people on how to make them feel better. To use the app, the users also have to register using ID which sometimes could make the users feel reluctant since they have not trusted the app to give their confidential information.
Other than that, there are also CBT-based apps called Bloom and MinDoc. However, these apps are not targeted at Indonesians and they are written in English. Hence, it cannot capture all the markets in Indonesia that are mostly not English natives. Other than that, to use the full version of the apps, we have to pay and subscribe to the developer which might be inconvenient for people who are still trying out the app. Lastly, there is a lack of promotion of these apps in Indonesia.
II. DEFINE
USER PERSONAS
Based on our interviewees, we created 2 user personas that represent our target customers.
III. IDEATE
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
After conducting research and creating user personas, I developed the informational architecture of my app. Here are the main features of the app.
IV. PROTOTYPE
SKETCHES & WIREFRAMES
Based on the informational architecture I have created, I sketched some of the key pages of the app then digitized them using Adobe XD. Here are some of the sketches and wireframes.
V. VALIDATE
USABILITY TESTING
I then conducted other interviews with 3 people to ask for their opinion about the features and the user experience. I purposely did usability testing before adding color and design to let the users focus on the main functionality of the app instead of the design. Based on my interviews, these are some of the important feedbacks that they gave.
Other than that, I also conducted A/B testing for the mood input page. I gave the users two alternatives to choose from and I asked them to choose which one they think is the best.
Based on their choices, all of them chose page B because it is much easier and does not cause a lot of hassle while using it.
KEY INSIGHTS
Problem: Users felt restricted while using the chat app
Solution: Allow the users to choose different activities that they like, giving users some flexibility and control over what they do
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Problem: It was hard to access the daily journal page
Solution: Move the daily journal from the entries page to the journal page. Since the journal page is the first thing that they see, it will be easier to notice such features exist
Problem: It was hard to find the mood input features in the app
Solution: A new icon was added to the navigation where the users can directly click to adding the new mood input
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Problem: The users were confused about how to see their mood performances
Solution: Move the report page into the mood section on the entries page, since the entries page are meant to be the place where all records of the users' past activities and entries are stored
BRANDING
Considering that it is a stress management application, I decided to use a main color that is calming. For the other color palette, I used warmer and softer colors. While for the typeface and elements, I used non distracting and round edges elements.
PROTOTYPES
After we had done creating the sketches and wireframes and brainstormed the branding of the app, we transformed it into high fidelity prototype using Figma. The followings are some of the final prototypes of the app.
Onboarding
A brief explanation of the main features of the app.
Getting started
Users will be asked to input what they choose to be called. Then, they will be able to choose which topics they want to focus on solving.
Jot down some journals
The users will be able to do journaling from different choices of journals template provided. They are also able to add the journal to their “Daily Journal Lists”.
Share your thoughts
The users will be able to chat with an AI chatbot and share their feelings and thoughts. The chatbot will then give recommendations of activities and stories to help them feel better.
Learn, do, and read
There will be different selections of courses for the users to access to better understand their conditions, and various activities and stories to help them feel better.
Record your entries
The users are able to view and edit some of the past entries of their activities in the app. There will be a report page for the users which gives a summarization of the mood tracker.
Input your feelings
The users will be able to input their moods and feelings each day.
Save your data
Your input can be saved by signing in using your email/Facebook/Google +/Twitter.
The prototype of Cheeria can be seen
LESSON LEARNED
From this experiment, there are many lessons that I can learn from this opportunity as such:
1. Conducting usability testing before making the final prototype. By doing this, it helped to save me a lot of time in revising and improving my design before jumping to the color and typography.
2. Following systematic design steps. While doing this project, I tried to adhere to the steps written in the project development section. The purpose is so that I have enough information to proceed to the next step of the design process. Hence, it is more systematic and saves a lot of time.
3. More hands-on experience in using design software. In this opportunity, I could practice more in using some prototyping software such as Figma and Adobe XD. Other than that, I also learned how to make my own illustration using Adobe Illustration.