This app is a result of a group research project looking at how to de-stigmatising mental health issue with young people. The app is designed to discourage the stigma of mental illness and make conversations of mental health symptoms and issues on a more common and regulated occurrence. My role in this project involves creation of the personas based on research, Planning of the user flow and prototype the high fidelity interface design of the app.
Research has shown young people are particularly vulnerable to not seek help when facing a mental health issue due to stigma regarding mental health. The goal of the app is to create a tool for that help these young people to overcome some of these barrier that prevent them to seek help.
Based on research these persona were created for our intended users.
Initial ideas revolves around an app that is like a mental Black Box, which records the user's feelings, habits and symptoms on a regular basis. These data gets categories and documented in a form of mental health history, which mental health professionals can have access to later on if the user decided to seek help. This is important as one of the barrier young people have is the inability to explain themselves to others and this will be a tool that will help them.
Other ideas of the app revolves around how to encourage user to seek help when they have issues. One of the main finding is young people don't know how to communicate their feelings to their family and peers as they often fear consequences of been judged. The app looks at resolving these issues by providing information on how to structure such conversation and who to reach out to whether it is to their peers, family or their local GP through varies medium options.
Low fidelity Paper cut out and initial prototype were created for user testing. The user performed think out loud and performed semi structured interview after they used the app to give feed back and insight on the experience using the app.
Changes made from the feedback into the final prototype gathered from the user testing are:
1. There is a need for more visuals on the data user put in as this will help user understand more and be more engaged.
2. Reach out to GP or mental health professional is very positive and need to be more of a focus.
3. More straight forward login via social media
