Bee Kind: expose your feelings in style
You just got home after a long day at the office. Your coworkers pressured you from all corners, and your boss casually asked you — again — to stay late next week and crunch to finish that very special project. All you want to do now is sit down and relax, but your TV stopped working and the internet is down due to “unexpected maintanence in your area”. You feel like a time bomb, clock ticking down until you just can’t take it anymore and just want to scream at the world.
If there was just someone to talk to and tell them how you really feel. But nope, your family just brings the classic line “life is hard” and your close friends are as buried in work as you are. Therapy could be nice, sure, but the thought of spending $100 per session quickly changes your mind. It’s not only expensive, but what if you can’t even stand the therapist?
If there was just a way to tell someone — anyone willing to listen — how you really feel. Let it go for just a minute as you get to vent and finally expose your feelings, maybe reach out to a person that understands your present state and can offer a few words of advice. Now that would be good, wouldn’t it?
*cuts to A Space Odyssey theme song*
Say hi to Bee Kind! An online message system where you can share your feelings and thoughts anonymously and get positive feedback from a community that comes from a multitude of backgrounds — all the while you listen to a cozy soundtrack and enjoy a neon heavy, cyberpunk inspired design. Write and reply to letters sent by people that just want to be heard, and make a change in the world by simply being kind.
I — The current state of mental health
It’s probably not a huge surprise that cases of anxiety and depression are growing on a year by year basis. Our brains are subjected to an increasingly higher amount of information, pressure comes from all sides and a global pandemic certainly helped to increase the number of mental health issues worldwide.
In the United States 45% of individuals with a clinical-level mental problem do not seek professional help. There is also a huge stigma attached to seeking therapy, as people feel ashamed of their symptons. The case involving mental health professionals is a little bit more complex than that, however. For a lot of people, financial pressure is a reason to cut back on therapy. It’s not only expensive, but you need time and chemistry to find the right therapist for your particular case.
We have set up the battleground to face this very delicate, difficult issue. Anxiety and depression are on the rise. Not only that, but stigma is a huge challenge for people that live with mental health issues. There is also the matter that seeking medical aid can cost a lot. Okay, we are finally understanding the problem better. Time to dig deeper.
II — Benchmarks! Surveys! Interviews!
We have an idea of how massive of a challenge mental health issues are nowadays, but what are mobile apps doing to try and minimize the problem? On the graphic above, you can see some of the most downloaded apps related to the subject, and we can easily reach new conclusions after a quick glance.
1: Mental Health apps tend to be very specific in nature, with meditation apps and mood charts dominating the list.
2: Apps that offer professional help are usually extremely expensive, and in some cases the user is expected to spend around $100 per week.
3: Almost every example focuses on a single theme to combat mental health issues.
Studying the marketplace gives us a new perspective on what to do and what not to do to help users in need. For example, meditation apps are extremely common, and a new app in that same vein probably wouldn’t make sense in a saturated market. It’s interesting to notice, however, that our examples are mostly extremely focused on a single subject and don’t deviate too much from it.
Awesome, we have a few insights after our initial desk research. Our benchmark was also crucial to explain how the market is treating mental health issues nowadays. Now that we understand how the market is reacting, let’s focus our attention on the main subject: our users.
A quick survey with 30+ people that experience or have experienced mental health issues shows a lot of curious details. As we can see, one quarter of users say that they should seek a therapist, but just don’t do it for various reasons — high prices, lack of energy, time or even depression itself, which, in many cases, makes it harder for a person to even leave the house.
Another very interesting fact is that an overwhelming 75% of users say that they feel better after exposing their feeling or having a good listener that can understand what they are going through. So, simply talking to someone sounds like a very good way to raise the mood and feel better.
After our initial survey, it’s time to make things more personal with an in-depth interview. Seven names answered a batch of six questions, with selected quotes being shown on the screencap above.
We can easily see that writing and talking to someone is a good way to raise the mood and feel significantly better. Some people prefer to have a good listener, while others write in their own diaries and dive deep into their own thoughts. The interviews helped us to consolidate a point raised by the surveys: expressing your feeling is a good way to fight anxiety and depression. Noted!
We also confirmed another suspicion during our interviews: a lot of people don’t seek therapists not only because it’s expensive, but they have a hard time finding the right professional to fit their personality. A lot of therapists end up doing more harm than good, with some interviewees saying they felt a lot of pressure to be better after a single session. Therapists are not only about money, but it takes a lot of time — months or even years — to develop chemistry with the right one.
We have good knowledge of the problem so far, and ways to bring new ideas to the table. Let’s see what we can cook up now.
III — Problem, meet solution
Here’s what we have learned so far *takes a deep breath* : a lot of people that try to improve their mental health have trouble finding easy and effective ways to expose their feelings and be heard. Not everyone seeks professional help, due to the high prices of therapists, or simply for a lack of time and energy.
That’s a lot to take in! Here are our main guidelines:
1: It’s important that we invest in an idea that doesn’t focus on meditation or mood trackers — there are already way too many options out there for the user to choose.
2: We should let the user expose their feelings and be heard.
3: Positivity. Let’s raise the mood and reduce stress levels by being polite and having each other’s back. There is way too much negativity out there already.
And here are our solutions for now:
1: Let’s create an online diary system where the user can anonymously write their feelings, share it with the whole world and receive feedback. By being anonymous, we can add an extra layer of protection to our users and they don’t feel the pressure of being the “best me” possible.
2: Our app will be built upon positivity to create a healthy community. This won’t be an online forum for fierce discussions, but a place for users to support each other.
3: Customization. We should let each user customize their experience with their very own avatars and space where they will share their feelings. Familiarity leads to comfort, and increases the chance people will share their thoughts without any stigma.
Bee Kind is slooooowly being born, awesome! We now need a cozy space for the user to share their feelings, so we decided to create a neon aesthetic, showing the user avatar relaxing in a completely customizable room. Bright colors are great for creating a cheerful and welcoming atmosphere, and can even fight depression.
Hmmm a relaxing atmosphere is indeed a good idea. How about Bee Kind’s very own music player? Music can be super relaxing! Maybe our player™ can not only be linked to Spotify, but also include some indie hits, a little bit of jazz and even ambient weather effects like raining and thunderstorms, those are known to be rather relaxing.
And what about the main screen? We should let the user quickly edit both their room and avatar whenever they want to. We should also let them easily write a new message to the community, and also read messages from the community, giving their feedback and advices. Finally, the store should be included the nav bar and be updated regularly with cool new stuff that will change the user’s experience.
And with that…
We have a screen! WE HAVE A SCREEN! …wait, it’s not time to celebrate, at least not yet. We love it, sure, but what about our users? Well, the time has come for…
IV — …some Testing!
Testing can be the nightmare of a UX/UI Designer. Sometimes you think you have the greatest idea of all time since sliced bread, only to show it to a room full of curious individuals and see them with raised eyebrows not understanding a single concept of the screen in front of them. Let’s say it doesn’t feel good for us designers.
Still, it needs to be done, before we take a step further in our design process, make the necessary changes and just build a better product.
The overall idea of Bee Kind and most of the beta screens were presented to five testers. Here is what we learned with their feedback:
. Everyone really liked the idea of the app and thought it sounded pretty original. Big thumbs up! Almost everyone, however, was skeptycal of trolls. Our idea involves a very delicate subject, and trolls could do a lot of harm against a vulnerable community. We need to create a good system to protect our users.
. People want to write and share their feelings in a safe space, awesome. Testers also say that the writing section could have something cool — be it messages or an image — that urges users to write and share their thoughts.
. Reading what people have to say and sending them replies is awesome. Testers don’t want to read messages one by one, but have a list of messages with a preview of what they say, so they can select the ones they feel more attached to, and then reply.
. Customizing your own room and avatar sounds like a great idea! People want fun stuff available at the store which can make their experience more unique, and also show it to the community.
Time to absorb the feedback and bring Bee Kind to l i f e!
V — Say hi to Bee Kind!
There it is! Our prototype. Well, part of it, anyway. We shall guide you, dearest reader, through the process of creating your account. As you can see, the most important detail in this early phase is that the user is required to link a phone number to their profile.
This adds a new layer of security for our members, as it reduces the chances for bots and trolls to sign up for Bee Kind by just entering an e-mail and password. Will it completely erase malicious accounts? Nope. The objective here, however, is to make the sign up process harder for them, as they’d need to enter a phone number which could potentially be perma-banned from the system in case of harmful activity.
After setting up a phone number, the user can then choose an username, password, fill in their e-mail and... that’s it! You are then ready to enter the world of Bee Kind! …or, should we say, enter your virtual room in Bee Kind.
Ahhh this looks so cool! Okay, I might be a little biased, but this room looks awesome, doesn’t it? The mix of purple and blue, the highlighted items, the sound bar playing on top… everything looks so slick and cozy!
That’s what we want to offer our users: a virtual place they can call their own and customize to their preferences. Not happy with your jukebox sitting in the corner? You can change its location. Just bought a fish tank? Sure, go ahead and put it next to your table.
We also want items to not be just, well, items. We want them to have meaning. So let’s say you got the jukebox — you can click on it to change your music, but you can also create playlists and play extra songs that only unlock after you purchased that specific item. The letters you can see resting on the bottom table also serve a purpose. They are a shortcut to your messages and notification will also appear there if you get a new reply.
Let’s now check two of the main features of Bee Kind: writing your own letter and replying to our lovely community.
VI — The long lost art of being kind
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, people used to be kind to each other………….. okay, they used to be a little bit more kind to each other, at least more than what we see now. There is so much negativity nowadays, and the social media boom is one of our main culprits.
That’s why we want Bee Kind to be a place for positivity. Let’s have each other’s backs! The main nature of our app is to be(e) nice and enjoy your time there. Don’t flame. Don’t troll. Don’t get hostile. Helpful notes pop up in specific screens asking users to be polite while writing letters, and give feedback in the healthiest ways possible. Being confrontational can lead to reports, suspension and even a banned account.
Let’s check the writing page for now! You can already see a few visual cues that are there to help the user to write their own message. There is also a heat map updated from time to time, showing where letters are coming from and the amount of letters exchanged in the past 24h. Not only that, but we even included random motivational quotes from famous thinkers and personalities!
“When you give joy to other people, you get more joy in return. You should give a good thought to happiness that you can give out.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
See? Quotes like that one. To write your letter you simply click the text box, write what goes inside your mind, click send and… done! Our message was sent to the entire community. Now we just sit back, relax and wait for the replies to come in.
How about we check what other people are writing and see if we can answer some requests?
Once again, a quick tutorial message tells our users to be nice and positive before presenting them a list of letters written by our community. The main purpose of a big list like this is to give you a small preview of each message and samples of what they are about. This way, users can quickly scan letters and see if they identify themselves with a particular message, then click on them to reply. In our example above, we just clicked the random letter button to get access to a lucky request.
There are a lof of options when you interact with another member. You can visit their room to see how they designed it, or send them a gift or, in some cases, even report them for a toxic message. We take the nature of our app very seriously, and any reports will be analyzed by a team of moderators.
To write your feedback, you only need to click on the text box, write and then click send. Done! Hopefully the person in the example above can reply back before the end of this article. Let’s check the store while we wait.
The store is heavily inspired by a number of mobile games, with a good mix of neon and pixel art. We start our journey with 10 coins, which is, unfortunately, not enough to buy a Chihuahua. But, hey, we can definitely buy that guitar! We can always add more money later by clicking the plus icon, and fill our pockets until we buy every dog breed available.
As we said before, we want items to feel special. Our brand new guitar will appear in our room, and where we put it is up to us. The guitar also serves a very cool purpose! When we click on it, some of the current music in our app will now play in a heavy metal style. Fancy!
You know what else is cool? We got two new notifications while checking the store! I bet they are new messages sent to our inbox, so let’s see what they are about.
New replies can be accessed by clicking on the top right menu or by selecting the letter icon in your main room. We then get to see a sample of the message we initially wrote and a sealed envelope with the new reply just below it. Oh, I can’t even handle the tension! Envelopes even come with cool stamps, some of them showing that there is a gift inside.
Once we click on the envelope, we are led to chat layout showing all messages exchanged between the two community members. In the case above, it seems like the person appreciated our message enough to send us a gift! Let’s redeem this bubble effect and send it to our inventory so we can put it in our letters later on.
And that’s it! We went through the process of writing our very first letter, replying to a message, buying a cool guitar and we even had time to see how our feedback made someone happy today.
This is what Bee Kind is all about. Helping each other during the hard times, building a community that can trust each other and have a place to share their feelings without feeling the weight of pressure on their shoulders. If we can make a single person happy, that’s already considered a success. There is still a lot of work to be done, however, and we even have plans for the far future.
Care to see them?
VI — Looking ahead… to the future!
Great Scott! There are already so many ideas for Bee Kind, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? We are going to share two of our biggest wishes and desires, which would require a lot of work, but would also be amazing to see in action.
- You have a whole room for yourself, right? How about… a whole village? An entire town where avatars can walk around, and you would be able to personally give letters you wrote. There could be karaokes, bars and different places where avatars could meet and wave to each other. You could even spot the letter requests above their heads. Would it require a lot of work? Yes. Would it be a lot of fun? YES.
- How about special profiles for therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals? Maybe a special badge after they set up their account and verify that they work in the field. They could have access to a special page, where they can reply to letters that are even more delicate in nature.
We hope you enjoyed this brief time with us! Just like in our app, comments and feedback are always welcome. Just don’t forget…
…always bee kind to each other. Our world can always use a little more positivity, even more so now.
A prototype of this project can be found here
