PROJECT SUMMARY
"THRIVE" is a mental health application designed to help university students achieve their mental health goals and to find the resources they need. This was a 5-team group project as part of the undergraduate UX course CSC318.
Problem
University of Toronto students faced challenges managing their mental health during stressful periods of the semester, which led to a decline in both their mental health and academic performance over time.
Solution
✅ Constructed a mobile application "THRIVE" designed to support students to manage their mental health through personalization & gamification.
My Roles
- Constructed the 1-on-1 qualitative interview scripts.
- Served as the discussion co-leader for group meetings.
- Constructed hi-fidelity wireframes & prototypes for Thrive's dashboard.
- Provided a 20-minute Figma tutorial to team members.
- Co-presented our final project to the class.
Duration
September - December '22
01. Solution Preview
02. Achievements
Personal Achievements
🏆 Naturally served as the co-leader
With my useful background in cognitive science, graphic design, and public speaking, I naturally adopted a leadership position during the course of the project.
🏆 Volunteered as a design mentor
I provided my team with a 20-minute crash course on Figma. I really wanted my group members to feel comfortable with the application and empower them to create wireframes on their own time.
🏆 My ideas led to impactful results
I was largely responsible for the visual design of the app. This led to 7 out of 11 participants in our usability test, reported that the visual design was the aspect they liked most about the app.
03. Motivation
Our team was motivated to pursue "mental health of university students" as our problem space because of its unfortunate relevance to what we have experienced at university — either with ourselves, university friends, or stories that we’ve heard on campus. Our team agreed that there's a lot to manage when at university: from attending lectures, meeting assignment deadlines, allocating sufficient study-time, and much more. A number of us expressed that these pressures, amongst other reasons, had led us to experience a poor quality in mental health during our time at university.
To support our first-hand findings, we were able to identify news articles addressing the mental health challenges faced at universities such as from the University of Toronto (2022), to University of Pennsylvania (2017), to University of British Columbia (2021).
To support our first-hand findings, we were able to identify news articles addressing the mental health challenges faced at universities such as from the University of Toronto (2022), to University of Pennsylvania (2017), to University of British Columbia (2021).
04. Research
Research Goals
- Primary: Validate the problem that university can cause students to experience poor mental health.
- Secondary: If the primary goal is adequately achieved, then uncover the causes behind why students are experiencing the problem.
User Criteria
Mental health is a sensitive topic, so we approached user definition and recruitment cautiously. Although our focus was on anxiety, stress, depression, and burnout, we avoided directly asking participants about these conditions. Instead, we asked if they wanted to improve their mental health. This led us to the following user criteria:
- Current University of Toronto student (undergrad or graduate)
- Has gone through at least one semester of university
- Has a desire to improve their mental health
Research Methods
For the 1-on-1 interview script, a certain subset of interview questions would follow a tree diagram structure (see below). This would enable me to effectively assess the existence of any kind of correlation between university and poor mental health. Furthermore, this structure helps avoid leading questions. We do not want to assume the participants mental health has changed and we also do not want to assume that this change is negative, especially since that was not part of our user recruitment criteria.
Research Results
Conclusion
To conclude, the Problem Space has been validated by our research. Through this process, we have also confirmed that there exists an array of influences that can cause students to experience poor mental health whilst at university. The specific ways in which university can cause poor mental health can be found in the synthesized interview data, displayed in the Research Results table above.
Furthermore, it appears that from both the interview and survey data pools, the majority of students are well-aware of strategies and/or resources to improve their mental health, and yet choose not to use them. Based on other pieces of data, we can conclude potential reasons for this behaviour such as lacking the motivation to use them, not having the time, and not believing that they would be useful.
Furthermore, it appears that from both the interview and survey data pools, the majority of students are well-aware of strategies and/or resources to improve their mental health, and yet choose not to use them. Based on other pieces of data, we can conclude potential reasons for this behaviour such as lacking the motivation to use them, not having the time, and not believing that they would be useful.
05. Defining Our User
After sifting through the user research data, we extrapolated user characteristics that naturally sorted into 2 different categories (albeit with some overlap). This resulted in us defining 2 different personas.
"Perfectionist Parker"
"Shy Simone"
06. Brainstorming Solutions
Our group understood that mental health is complex and nuanced problem. The user research we did, not only reaffirmed this understanding, but it also provided more insight into ways that we can possibly help. To generate potential solutions, we followed a diverge-converge technique, where each member would brainstorm solutions on their own and then we would come together to discuss them. The specific structure we followed was, Group Discussion #1 Individual Brainstorm (diverge), then Group Discussion #2 (converge).
Group Discussion #1
The intent of this discussion, was to lay some basic rules for our individual brainstorming session. We did this as a way to expedite our idea generation process. Of course, the downside to having this discussion before any divergence session, is that it restricts creative freedom in our personal ideas. We were aware of this risk. Here are the ideas our group agreed would likely go forward in our product idea:
- Will be a digital application.
- Solution will incorporate some type of incentivization/gamification.
- Solution will incorporate will kind of mental health resource directory.
Individual Brainstorm
To conclude, the Problem Space has been validated by our research. Through this process, we have also confirmed that there exists an array of influences that can cause students to experience poor mental health whilst at university. The specific ways in which university can cause poor mental health can be found in the synthesized interview data, displayed in the Research Results table above.
Furthermore, it appears that from both the interview and survey data pools, the majority of students are well-aware of strategies and/or resources to improve their mental health, and yet choose not to use them. Based on other pieces of data, we can conclude potential reasons for this behaviour such as lacking the motivation to use them, not having the time, and not believing that they would be useful.
Furthermore, it appears that from both the interview and survey data pools, the majority of students are well-aware of strategies and/or resources to improve their mental health, and yet choose not to use them. Based on other pieces of data, we can conclude potential reasons for this behaviour such as lacking the motivation to use them, not having the time, and not believing that they would be useful.
Group Discussion #2 (converge)
The goal of this discussion was too converge our ideas from the Individual Brainstorming session.
Fortunately, many of our ideas were similar and/or complimented each other. This meant that having a self-assessment (long and short), goal tracking system, and a resource recommendation system could all easily be merged into a single app idea.
The only real conflict we had was deciding on which visualization to represent the mental health goals: a mountain (my idea), a game character (Member #2), or a plant (Member #3).
We resolved this by critically and open-mindedly discussing ways in which each idea could be superior/inferior to the others. We then unanimously voted on the preferred idea. We ended up going with a hybrid of my idea and Member #2's.
07. Our Solution
"THRIVE" is a mental health application designed to help university students (1) achieve their mental health goals & (2) find the resources they need.
Why #1? Students often don't achieve their mental health goals because they are unmotivated. Thus, by providing students with the ability to set, track, and monitor their mental health goals can make their goals seem more achievable. For such features, our app will prioritize high quality visual design and usage of gamification elements as a means to keep the user engaged for long periods. Furthermore, our app will suggest goals to set for the user based on the users completion of a formalized mental health self-assessment taken prior.
Why #2? Our user research showed that students were overwhelmed by the number of mental health resources available such as mental health apps, online articles, and podcasts. Thus, our aim is to streamline these resources. We will do this by having a repository of resources that the user can filter based on the topic and type of resource. By having these resources easily available at their fingertips, users will be less overwhelmed and more motivated to seek help.
08. Wireframing & Prototyping
I was responsible for developing the UX, features for Purpose 1 (i.e. helping students achieve their mental health goals), and the overall visual design of the app. One team member provided suggestions and assisted with the first iteration of high fidelity designs.
It was my creative vision to frame mental health goals as a mountain — I think it has immense metaphorical power. There's been countless studies highlighting the importance of taking small steps when it comes to achieving mental health goals (Halliday et al., 2022; Saul, 2017), and I think the mountain visualization captures this perfectly.
Lo-Fidelity Wireframe
Hi-Fidelity Wireframe
