Week 4 — things are moving

This week, we wrapped up our first round of interviews. In total, we spoke to 12 interviewees, adding more young professionals, college students, clinical psychologists, and research professors to the mix.

After finishing our interviews, the issues that are associated with mental health have become to feel much more real. It makes me realize that it’s critical for the designer to directly interact and listen to the stories of the people they are helping design for. These interactions have made myself become more aware of my own stress and times of anxiety, and feel more empathy and critique why we’re building this- something that can’t be replaced by reading numbers and statistics on mental health.

In summary, here are a few interesting things we learned:

1. People use a mix of physical manifestations and psychological symptoms to identify when their mental health is out of whack.
2. Vocalizing feelings to themselves and close friends/ family members is therapeutic. People have also figured out their own ways to cope- deep breathing, exercising, changing environments, and even singing.
3. Mental health stigma is starting to decline, but people often still don’t reach out for help to avoid feeling like a burden and vulnerable. They also prefer to reach out when there’s been existing conversation and resources available for help.
4. Anxiety is on the rise compared to depression in young adults, and may be related to growing externality.
5. Resilience, connectedness, and learning to be comfortable with boredom can be helpful ways to boost mental health.
6. External events are stressful to individuals to the extent that it requires people to change.
7. We should be sensitive that technology used to address mental health does not push people further apart. What we build should not replace human contact.

Mid week, we finally got to sketching ideas as a group based on the insights drawn from the interviews. I’m excited that I finally get to start turning things visual with paper prototyping!

Next week, we’ll start putting our paper prototypes in front of users for a round of testing to see which ideas stick and which don’t. It’s been a bit of struggle trying to get enough different ideas out there, and we’re hoping our users can give us some insights to think about.