Listen to the voice of your therapist
In the following paragraphs, I will discuss the importance of a human-centric approach to mental health with a concrete use-case that we added on the Aepsy platform: Letting our psychotherapists and psychological coaches present themselves by simply using their voices.
As many industries are innovating, it has been great to see the impact that such digital transformation has brought for end users. Services like Uber and Google Maps have proven that the experience of ordering taxis (or food) and navigating in cities can be drastically easier, and feel much more intuitive for the end-user.
Yet, the field of health, more specifically mental health, has been lacking behind in this transformation toward a more digital, or hybrid future for their clients. By taking a technology-first approach, many mental health services are prioritizing a certain standardization of experiences rather than answering the individual’s personal needs. However, as people still have deep human needs to connect emotionally and personally with each other, designers must be specifically mindful when trying to replicate these personal physical interactions on digital touchpoints. Especially on such important and personal topics, more effort must be put in to make these platforms more humane to use.
Users should have the right to get a respectful and humane experience when reaching out for their mental health support.
Facilitating the best personal match
At Aepsy, we are thinking a lot about the quest to bring the most humane experience to our clients who are trying to book their psychotherapists or psychological coaches. After sharing their personal preferences, our algorithm is suggesting 3 best matches to the user. At this stage of the experience, the main question for the client is: Which one of these therapists should I select?
The first effort was to offer a clear profile picture for each therapist. The user should be at least able to visualize who they want to choose. It sounds like a basic requirement yet still many mental health platforms out there are still only suggesting a name and phone number. Not even displaying a picture of the expert. What a feeling for the user.
The second necessary step was to add all personal information about the therapist; the name, location, fields of practice, expertise, and price are all keys to making a successful choice.
Although both of these steps are necessary, they are still considered as common information that many platforms are currently offering.
More pieces of information like the personality and style of the expert need to be gathered to facilitate the user’s decision process. We, therefore, decided to go one step beyond the imagery and turned our focus to sound.
A picture tells a thousand words, what about a voice?
To answer this question for our users, we have introduced a short audio presentation on the therapist’s personal profile page.
This audio presentation aims to create a more personal and humane touch to this decision-making process. It helps clients to have a glimpse and imagine shortly what a therapy session can sound like. Bringing more trust and bringing a better experience for them.
Furthermore, it helps to shortly give an idea of the tone of voice, the friendliness of the voice, or even the “Schweizer-Deutsch” accent of that expert. All of the things a picture cannot tell. The length of the audio clip, usually between 45s and 90s, can be fast to consume for users; giving them the possibility to browse different therapists in a short time. During this time, therapists can express themselves freely, as if they would be in a real therapy session.
Visualizing audio
After gathering a couple of audio tracks from therapists, the next challenge was to present them in the best possible way for the user.
Simplicity, usability, and emotionality were the key focus. Each audio track has been attached to the profile picture of the therapist. Through a simple click on a play button, the presentation starts. To create a more humane and personal touch to these presentations, two rings pulsating inward and outward were added. These rings were inspired by the rhythm of breath from the therapist themselves.
This animation aims to mimic the breathing rhythm of each therapist.
By taking an average respiratory rate of 12 to 16 breaths per minute (source), each of these two rings was given an animation time of 2–2.5 seconds, to mimick, together with a full relaxed breathing cycle of about 4s to 5s. Details like this were designed to bring this human aspect to even the most mundane technological feature that is an audio player.
At this moment of the experience, the page must feel alive to the user, every pixel designed and lines of code must aim to bring the digital and physical experiences closer together.
Feel free to experience it on the following presentation from Bess Gutmacher, Patrik Gugger, or Lena Wieser.
Why not video?
As a medium, Audio seemed to be the perfect solution that takes into consideration all stakeholders in the process. For users, they can focus solely on the content of what is being said by the expert, removing all other stimuli that could interfere with their decision. Secondly audio offers certain privacy and intimacy on how the medium is being consumed. Unlike a fixed video, the user can wander around the page and not dedicate his or her visual attention to the fixed imagery of that expert. On the therapist’s side, offering an audio track gives the expert higher freedom of expression while respecting their personal choice to not expose themselves in front of a camera.
Conclusion
It is clear that, on our journey to bring better access to mental health, this audio presentation is just one little feature that we are adding to the overall experience. Many more thoughts like this are necessary to enable people to feel supported just a few clicks away.
If you would like to follow the journey of Aepsy, feel free to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Linked-in. If you want to get in touch with us, or proving feedbacks, feel free to write us at hey@aepsy.com
