Rethinking UX in Mental Health Care
How can we alleviate pain points in this sensitive field?
Objective
During my studies at California College of the Arts, my team was tasked to create a service within the healthcare industry.
Collectively, we felt the mental care realm could use the most improvement. All of us utilized various forms of therapy methods such as school counselors, psychiatric medication, and traditional therapy.
Team
Destini Elise (Myself ): UX/Visual Designer
Daniel Klein: Project Manager / UX Designer
Kelly Stuckey: Product Vision Director
Adelya Tumasyeva: Graphic Designer
Primary Research
In the beginning, we were clueless about the industry outside of our assumptions. Before we began to dig deeper, we wanted several pieces of information.
- How common is mental illness?
- What is the infrastructure of mental health care from
the providers’ perspective? - How do patients get care without the help of
parents/mentors and what is that process? - What is the most preferred method of care?
- How do patients cope with illness without the use of
professional assistance?
To bridge our knowledge gaps, we interviewed two healthcare professionals and nine patients both online and in-person.
Insights
Experience Mapping
We continued to research similar health care services to find out what they did well and what they were missing based on our findings. Most products required digital meetings, expensive subscriptions, and temporary solutions.
Based on the interviews & insights; we knew we needed to create a service that would allow the users to have more control over their care from start to finish. The team began to map out the current experience of young mental health care patients
What should we create?
After it was clear what the problems were for most patients, we began to narrow down key issues we wanted to address within our service.
- What can we do to allow strategic therapist selection?
- How can our product help with the rising cost of service?
- How can we address stigma in our service?
All of us brainstormed many possible solutions. We started to eliminate and combine different ideas until we had only three concepts to explore.
The Birth of Ora Therapy
Ora Therapy is an application that would match patients to a therapist based on an in-depth analysis of what the patient feels are the most important attributes to have in a therapist.
What is it? : Key Features
- In-depth questionnaire to eliminate the endless search for a compatible therapist
- In person meetings in flexible, safe spaces instead of expensive retail offices
- Friendly empathic branding to help destigmatize therapy
Who will use this?: Persona
Our target audience was 18– 24-year-olds with established health insurance with no prior encounters with therapy. We named our persona Michelle.
Service Vision: Michelle finds help
Michelle is a 23-year-old college student who is currently struggling with depression. Her friends have shown support and concern; however, she doesn’t know where to start in her recovery.
While on her way home from work, Michelle discovers an Ora advertisement. She decides to download the app to learn more about the service.
Ora promptly gives an overview of the service and encourages her to take the short survey to find a therapist right for her.
After seeing her results, Michele clicks on a recommended therapist.
Branding
Ora is a service that normalizes seeking therapy. The language is passive, and imagery reflected nature. Our advisements would be placed on public transportation so our audience could find a slice of peace amongst the busy city.
Creating the UI
When designing the UI, we started off with trying to make the onboarding process as simple as possible. Users would able to choose what kind of service they wanted, “emergency therapy” or “choose a therapist.” It started off asking the user what kind of person they are, what topics they wanted to discuss, and what type of therapy they’d prefer. The user’s input would allow us to present them with five potential therapists in their area and finish scheduling an appointment.
View Ora Video Service Vision: https://vimeo.com/249199498
Prototyping
Five experienced designers went through our entire onboarding process, and we gathered feedback.
Print Advertising
User would most likely: Google the company to find out more information
Quotes: “Wonder what their selling” “Very intriguing” “How does the imagery reflect the solution to the problem?” “There is no “Perfect” therapist.”
Website
User would most likely: Download the app
Quote: “Having therapy in a public space is weird.”
Application
User would most likely: Felt uncomfortable with questions 50% chance of follow through
Quote: “I want both.” [Wants a peer & mentor type therapist] “Spiritual?” “Feels legit.” “Didn’t I give my name already?”
Therapy Session
User would most likely: Keep the card and continue using the service
Quote: “I like the artifacts that remind me of the experience.”
Now, what do we do?
With all of the feedback we received and the nearing deadline for the project, we had to decide what to work on until the final presentation.
The most important thing that we learned was users overall wanted to know more about the cost of Ora Therapy, how insurance companies reimbursed the service and why we need the information we requested. They were happy that the service existed however without these critical pieces of information it was overall difficult build trust with users.
The team decided that the essential part of the user’s experience was the application. With the final weeks of the project, we refined the order in which the questions appeared, removed the demographic questions and framed them in a more conversational tone with a chatbot.
Final Observation
Before we receive information, we must allow each question to inform the next this would slowly gain user’s trust so they would decide to follow through with scheduling a therapy session.
Check out the prototype: https://marvelapp.com/3396970
Reflection
Many complexities within the medical billing realm complicate this industry. In the future, we would consider sensitivity to language, cost, and insurance compatibility.
