Designing for Mental Health
In support of Mental Health Awareness Week, 13–19 May, Ladies that UX London hosted an empowering evening of talks at Foolproof HQ.
Francis Rowland, Róisín O’Toole, and Rob Sterry explored challenges and best practices designing for mental health. Although each speaker spoke of their own unique experience, together, they shared common themes of awareness, empathy, and inclusivity.
I signed up for this event expecting to learn how to design better digital experiences for people with mental health problems. What I quickly realised was that I was only looking at one side of the coin.
The talks not only discussed how we can be inclusive of our audiences’ mental health. They brought to light the mental health of designers themselves, as well.
Do no harm.
In reality, “design for mental health” is much more nuanced than we may think. Francis Rowland, Senior UX Architect at Sigma, encouraged us to use principles of inclusive design.
Inclusive design involves embracing diversity and finding ways to include others in the design process. “Mental health is an aspect of diversity, after all,” reminded Rowland. By understanding different needs, capabilities, and aspirations, he believes we can:
- Remove distractions and barriers, allowing people to focus on the task at hand
- Be thoughtful about tone in language and imagery
- Help people feel less isolated by directing them to communities and producing ways to connect, such as through online chat
- Reassure when people are in the right place
- Actively consider the impacts of our design decisions
- Share ideas and work collaboratively on design systems
This perspective not only suggests design for all, but design by all — working with people in other design principles, such as architecture, urban planning, and service delivery can help us see broader impacts and needs.
Applying inclusive design is good practice but how can we specifically improve experiences for people with mental health issues?
Learn about mental health — read about it, get involved, and ask questions. This will help us develop awareness, language, and tools that we can use to help ourselves and our teammates.
“If we can look after our own mental health, we can imbue what we make with some of that,” advised Rowland.
He encouraged us to create our own mental health first aid kits and raise awareness in the office. Mental Health at Work — curated by the mental health charity Mind and funded by The Royal Foundation as part of their Heads Together campaign — provides practical resources for the workplace.
Understanding others starts with understanding yourself.
Having shared her personal journey into UX, Róisín O’Toole, UX Director at Elemental Concept, challenged designers to first focus on their own mental health.
Her message addressed practical techniques for coping, living, excelling and giving back:
1. Understand yourself through introspection.
Introspection is the examination of one’s own mental and emotional processes.
Once we’ve understood ourselves, we can start to understand our standards. For O’Toole, this meant asking herself:
- What is acceptable for me and what is not.
- What is normal and what is not.
- What is quality and what is not.
- What is living and what is not.
Not only should we do this internally but also externally — we should listen when others, such as your colleagues, your partner, family and friends have feedback to share.
2. Recognise triggers and what different situations do to you.
Why are bad behaviours so hard to kick?
It’s probably because we’re incredibly good at creating ‘blindspots’ for them. O’Toole suggested we could have better visibility of these blindspots by holding a metaphorical mirror to the back of our heads.
She explained that by seeing these bad behaviours, we can better:
- Spot what our triggers are, so we can avoid them.
- Understand what certain situations will mean for our minds, so we can manage them.
- Learn how we tend to react instinctively, so we can then assess the situation and apply logic to ground ourselves.
- Understand when the build up of a situation is going to cause us to implode so we can understand not only to step away, but how to avoid getting there in the first place.
3. State the issue out loud.
This strategy felt most relevant to me, perhaps because one of my project teams have recently become out-of-sync on a few fronts and was in need of a reset.
We’re all familiar with the value of open, honest, and constructive communication. But we sometimes need reminding of how to best go about doing it. Thankfully, O’Toole laid it out clearly for us:
- State the issue.
- State the consequence.
- State the solution.
- Be respectful.
“Don’t fear the awkward conversation that you know has to happen,” she emboldened. “Reframe it as an opportunity to jump a hurdle and enhance how your team works by being honest and authentic.”
4. Accept your limitations.
We often view limitations as a negative aspect of being human. We get caught up in moving ‘onwards and upwards’ and forget (or ignore) that we cannot be and do everything.
But honesty goes a long way – for both you and your company. Learn when to say no, when to ask for help, and when to pause and take a breath. O’Toole encouraged us to share our limits with those around us and discuss “infeasible tasks” with our teams and boss as early as possible so any influence on delivery is clearly understood by all.
“It’s smart, it’s responsible and it’s staying authentic to you.”
It’s OK to let things break…
“…it’s why we have research!” Rob Sterry, Principal Consultant at Foolproof, spoke to us about his struggle with unrealistically high standards for design — expectations that he, rather than others, had a habit of setting for himself.
He used a quadrant graph to visualise his working relationship with control. It looked similar to a feature prioritisation table, but with value on the x-axis, trust on the y-axis, and control as the diagonal line from bottom left to top right quadrants.
Sterry admitted to placing everything he needed to do in the top right quad, giving every task a ‘meaning’ of high-value and a great amount of trust. Attempting to seek perfection in everything he designed impeded his progress to complete even the simplest things.
But this struggle was familiar to him. This struggle was within the remit of his comfort zone, which made it all the more difficult to prioritise tasks so they were more evenly distributed throughout the graph.
“By re-evaluating what really [lived] in the high meaning category and working on living with things that [were] low meaning, [I created] a greater capacity for creating beautiful designs,” explained Sterry.
Empathy has been important in his role as a line manager. He recognised that not every designer has tussled with expectations and control in the same way, but he wants to help his team learn from his mistakes.
We expect ourselves to be like others and, similarly, we expect others to understand ourselves. But it takes active communication and brutal honesty about our own emotional health — a term preferred by Sterry — to improve ourselves and the work we do.
For this event, attendees were able to donate £5 from their ticket to Maytree, a charity that provides residential services and support for people experiencing suicidal feelings.
We hope to see you at our next event in London, where we’ll be discussing accessibility with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
