OKB Hope — Bridging the Gap: Connecting Patients with Psychiatrists and Demystifying Mental Health in Ghana
Timeline: Fall 2023, 3 months
Team: Cornell Hack4Impact — Designers: Afran, Project Manager: Rhea, Tech Lead: Dylan, Developers: Jackie, Diego, Amy, Joe, Akhil, Jae, El
Goal: The goal of this project is to build a telehealth platform for mental health patients in Ghana to easily connect with psychiatrists and mental health professionals in the area.
Client: OKB Hope Foundation
Important Context: This product has been a multi-semester long project; the designs ideated, iterated, and prototyped on are part of the final semester of the product’s life cycle. The iterations you will see are largely based on the requests of the client and the work of the project’s previous designers. It’s also worth noting that since a majority of the design system was already laid out, there are not too many explorations in terms of design; they remain consistent with the patterns established and utilized in the previous semesters. Shoutout to Katherine, Jenn, and Naomi for the incredible work they’ve done and for passing the reigns to me to wrap up the product!
Through the Lens of Ghanaians: How is Mental Health Perceived?
Ghana has grown to be one of the most stable, developed countries in Africa. In 2019, they were regarded as having one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is working towards becoming a major democratic nation, serving around 30 million people. Among those 30 million people, however, a grand total of 64 of them are registered psychiatrists.
The underwhelming number of psychiatrists coupled with the fact that there are only 3 mental health hospitals in the entire nation to serve millions of potential patients should put into perspective just how disregarded mental health is in the country. There are hardly any conversations surrounding mental health and how to address it, and a large population still believes mental health is a product of supernatural forces.
As a result, the OKB Hope Foundation is working on their Wohohaime — meaning, “I care for you” in the Twi language — Initiative, which aims to transform the narrative surrounding mental health, provide accessible clinical care to patients, and educate the youth in order to empower them with the necessary tools to build upon their efforts.
After forming a partnership with OKB, we were tasked to work on building a telehealth platform that connects patients with psychiatrists, allowing them to message and set up virtual appointments with one another. Additionally, the platform is intended to function as a database as well, allowing for the extrapolation of data regarding mental health so that it can be used to create educational content for high school students in Ghana.
Empowering the Youth to Make Change: The Importance of Data
A core part of OKB Hope Foundation’s mission statement is to empower high school students in Ghana with the ability to change the perception of mental health in the country. In order to do so, our client requested the product to have a data analytics dashboard feature. After conducting user interviews, the dashboard was expected to address the following:
Originally, there was also the intention of collecting psychiatrist data, but the interviews revealed that as of now, there is no need for the product to collect data on the psychiatrist, nor was there any valuable information to extract from the data being collected on them.
Additionally, potential users expressed that data analytics platforms they are familiar with are Google Analytics and SQL, which utilize dropdowns and checkboxes for their menus and filters. As a result, the final designs of the data analytics dashboard reflect patterns that they are familiar with using, ensuring an optimal user experience.
Addressing the Dangers of Potential Misconduct: The Ability to Report
Part I: From the Perspective of the Patients and Psychiatrists
Facilitating interactions between people that you cannot see directly can come with potential dangers, among which are misconduct. Realizing the possibility of these issues, I worked with the client to ideate and implement a report feature that could be utilized by both psychiatrists and patients in the event they feel they have been wronged by one another. Should a patient or a psychiatrist feel like they are victim to some form of harassment, they can navigate to the respective profile page and submit a report like so:
Once a report has been successfully submitted, the user will be told as such and then be redirected to the discovery page. If they want to see their report history, they can do so from their profile.
Part II: Taking Action as an Administrator
Now that patients and/or psychiatrists have submitted reports, let’s take a look at the administrators’ perspective. They possess certain functions that are unavailable to other users, one of which is the ability to delete a user from the page. Reports serve as an avenue for where the deletion of a particular user can occur. However, no user should just be deleted without a reason or on accident. Similarly, no report should go overlooked or unread, but there are some that should be prioritized over others. After conducting user interviews with potential admin users, we were able to deduce the following flow for reports:
And so, after a report has been submitted, administrators are able to interact with the reports like such:
Once priorities have been assigned to reports and a psychiatrist or patient has received 3 reports, admin have the ability to delete the user from the platform permanently.
In the future, the client discussed the possibility of reinstating deleted users back on to the platform, introducing the possibility of temporary removals as opposed to solely permanent removals.
Reflecting
Working with the product presented valuable challenges that have strengthened my capabilities as a designer. I learned what it is like to work, ideate, and build based on the patterns and choices of other designers. This space was made slightly more difficult to navigate through than usual as I could not easily communicate questions that I had given that the previous designers were abroad this past semester.
With that being said, however, I was able to learn to make executive design choices and learn that no matter how well-crafted or prototyped a design may be, modifications may still be in order, especially when considering unique perspectives like that of a developer.
Above all else, it was an absolute pleasure to serve as the final designer for the Wohohaime telehealth platform and I’m excited to see the product be deployed and utilized to shift the narrative surrounding mental health in Ghana and bring readily accessible clinical care to patients across the nation.
