PINE Mental Health App
PINE helps you ease back to the workplace! 😊
Challenge
How can we design an app to help young professionals to cope with their mental health problems and maintain work performance?
Solution
Provided access to mental health counselling services
Built an online community to reduce social isolation,
My Role
UX Designer, UX Researcher, UI Designer, presenter
Project Time
Feb 2022 (4 weeks)
Tools
Figma, Miro, PowerPoint, Discord
Team of 5
My contribution: user research, user interviews, user empathy map, visual design, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing
Design Outcome
My challenge for this project
I need to ensure participants were willing to share their mental health information to help us define the user pain points. We let our selecting participants know that all the privacy information was kept confidential. The key insights and findings allowed us to learn about the specific mental health issues that young professionals experienced.
Design Process
Overview
After the pandemic in 2020, many companies have shifted their workforce to working remotely. According to Statista, by March 2021, 32% of Canadians reported working from home (WFM).
As we are approaching the post-Covid period, many companies adapt to a new normal. Some companies choose to bring their employees back on-site, while some have chosen to have their workforce working from home permanently.
The Survey on COVID-19 and Mental Health (SCMH) February to May 2021 by Statistic Canada,
25% of Canadians over age 18 and older are experiencing signs of depression
Roughly 5.3 million people in Canada mentioned they needed mental health support
75% of Gen Z left roles due to mental health reasons compared to 34% of overall
Hypothesis
If companies support their employees' mental health issues, it will lead to a decreased rate of loneliness, depression and social isolation.
Reason for the Research
We understand that correlation does not equal causation, but the data shows that the pandemic plays a role increase the rate of depression, social isolation and change in relationships.
With the overview of the post-Covid and work-from-home situation, user research is needed to dive into deeper insights to find the specific problems people experience and learn their pain points.
Purpose
The purpose is to define the specific problems employees are going through and the challenge is to help employees increase their mental health.
Objectives
Learn about the specific pain points work from home employees are experiencing that cause them to lose motivation and continuously feel stress while and after working hours. How can we help and improve young professional lives through an app?
Interview Methodology
User interviews were the qualitative research method this study conducted because user interviews allowed us to collect qualitative data by probing users with the " Why" and "How" questions.
During user interviews, researchers could easily observe selecting participants' behaviours and ask them to provide clarification and more detailed information on their experiences. The main goal of a user researcher is to drive the interviewees to describe their actual problems.
Anticipated Outcomes
Approach
Approximate Timeline
Who is our audience?
We are targeting employees with less than 10 years of experience in the workforce and who are currently experiencing mental health issues. Participants are between the age of 22 to 32.
Why?
According to Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) on Jan 7-11, 2022:
29% of Canadians between the age group of 18 to 39 are more likely to experience loneliness and depression compared to those who are older.
We chose participants who worked in a different industry to understand each participant's stress level, where the stress is from, and what the cause making employees feel isolated and depressed is.
Empathy Map
The Empathy Map is designed for employees who are struggling with mental health issues.
The user goal is to help identify where the crucial decision-making points are. Where and when do our product and service fit? and how does it help us to solve user problems/provide value?
User Journey Map
Based on the empathy map and user interviews, I created a user journey map to show the end-to-end experience of a user.
Findings and Themes
Research questions and goals
The three core research questions to focus on are related to participants' mental health and work:
What is the most significant impact of a mental health issue on working from home?
Should mental health apps provide counselling services to help reduce loneliness, stress and depression for young professionals?
The pandemic has adapted businesses to the new normal, but it also caused mental health issues for many young professionals. Why, despite online support, were the levels of mental health problems still high between 2021 and 2022?
The purpose of the research questions is to help and understand if counselling services would be helpful to employees to resolve their problems with mental health struggles.
Business goals
With the increasing rate of mental health issues, topics surrounding mental health and awareness are highlighted. As a company that wishes to attract new talents, it is crucial to show that the company cares about its employees. The successful business goal is to increase employees' work efficiency, increase employee retention rate and bring positive energy to the work environment.
What are the business limitations?
From a business's perspective, budget is one of the biggest concerns a company will focus on.
Another concern is employee privacy like what support can an app provide to help users support their mental health while protecting users' personal information and privacy? Because companies need to provide their employee's information to a third party.
What are the business needs?
Employee retention. Having consistent employees to help a business operate and grow can make a company easier to manage. A high turnover rate is costly and needs to spend a lot of time training and replacing employees. It is important to make sure that the company culture offers opportunities for its employees.
What is the business assumption?
Assumptions include financial and profitability. Would the initial investment be paid off and make profits? The assumption is validated by market research and financial planning.
The Solution
By providing access to mental health counselling services and building an online community to reduce social isolation, Pine is the app that supports employees’ mental health.
Why name it PINE?
PINE is a mental health and wellness app. We name it PINE because pine is an evergreen coniferous tree that has thick bark to protect against the cold and survive in winter. The smell of freshly-cut pine trees has a variety of positive effects on the human body and has the healing power of relieving stress and anxiety.
The positive energy of the PINE app is oriented toward employees who experiencing stress and anxiety at work and want to connect to others.
The App
Sketches to Wireframes
Home Page
Based on user research, starting your day with positivity could increase mental health for the day. I designed the home page began with starting your day with a positive daily quote. This allowed users to read a positive quote every time they sign in.
The home page has 2 main app functions: the counsellors' page and the social page. For counselling sessions, I created a dashboards section on the home page so users can see the CTA right away. For social events, I created an upcoming events carousel to display many events at one glance.
I did 3 rounds of iterations to improve the aligned search bar and account icons. I also added CTA buttons in iterations 2 & 3 for consistency and branding. At the bottom of the navigation bar, I added a description for accessibility.
Counsellors Page
The app has one-on-one sessions with counsellors and users can book a session with counsellors to share their life stories about their struggles.
I chose to use a simple and clear design to show each counsellor's profile and specialization.
The CTA button was moved to the bottom right in iterations 2 & 3 for a friendly design for our thumbs to reach.
Social Page
The social page screens went through the most changes for clarity. In iteration 1, events boxes are unclear and difficult to tell the events description. I added some spacing in iteration 2 and changed different types of fonts for consistency.
The social event page is for users to share their experiences with people who also struggle with mental health issues and support each other. Users can choose their preference to join online social groups or in-person social groups.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
I designed mid-fidelity wireframes to add soft drop shadow and highlighted CTA buttons to emphasize each action.
Rounded corners are easy on the eyes based on Apple iOS design guidelines. In our natural environments, leaves are oval. Humans are adapted to nature since childhood and this is the reason why our eyes aligned easily with ovals and circles.
Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
The Metrics
The metrics we will use to measure our success would be the # of counsellor appointments, the number of revisit counselling sessions, the social events sign up rate and the user feedback with Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Key Learnings
Based on the user interviews, the most significant impact of a mental health issue on working from home is a lack of social connection.
4 out of 4 interviewees stated that disconnectivity from coworkers and friends makes them feel isolated and lonely. Daily interaction provides them with a sense of belonging to the community.
4 out of 4 interviewees stated that work-from-home required time management, IT troubleshooting and switching between multiple hats created stress for them even after working hours
3 out of 4 interviewees stated that without recognition by their managers/ colleagues, they lost the motivation to achieve their goals.
Next Steps
The next step of this user research would be focusing on business metrics. The metrics we will use to measure our success would be the number of counsellor appointments, revisit counselling sessions, the social events sign-up rate and the user feedback with Net Promoter Score (NPS). However, due to limitations, the metrics we used are based on estimation and the average rate of mental health apps used in Canada.