Thrive
Overview
The Challenge
Healthcare workers regularly face chronic stress in their workplace. Burnout and trauma are common. And yet, many healthcare professionals report experiencing stigma and barriers surrounding mental health services at an institutional level.
My team conducted research and developed a solution to combat the lack of convenient resources and negative cultural attitudes that prevent healthcare workers from accessing pertinent mental health resources.
The Team
We had three individuals on our team. I was the planning lead for this project.
Facilitated daily meetings
Provided regular updates on progress and made sure team was on track to deliver on time
Aligned priorities and assigned tasks
Created slide deck for presentation to stakeholders
Assisted with research and interaction
Tools Utilized on Project
Problem
Healthcare professionals need a convenient and trusted way to access mental health resources to meet their needs, free of barriers in order to build and maintain healthy wellness habits.
Solution
Design a web application that connects healthcare professionals with compatible mental health resources to promote ease of access and personalized care in one safe space.
Research
Our team spent the majority of our research time focusing on users, competitive analysis, and secondary research. Our research goals were to:
Deeply understand the frustrations and barriers that medical professionals face when they seek mental health care
Learn what current resources already offer so that we could build upon existing good ideas and expand access to medical professionals based on user needs
Screener surveys results
We conducted a screener survey to identify current practicing healthcare workers who would be willing to participate in a follow up interview and to gain insights.
We asked respondents quantifiable questions about their work environments and how they felt about mental health. This helped us gauge or user base and develop our interview questions.
We learned that the majority of healthcare workers experienced stressful work environments and that almost half struggled to access mental health resources with ease and comfort.
User Interviews
From our screen survey results we selected 10 willing individuals for follow up interviews to gain more in depth insights. Each member of our team interviewed a handful of participants using a list of questions we created together. We asked things like:
What are your thoughts on the accessibility of mental health care services?
How do you go about finding mental health resources?
What is important to you when looking for mental health resources?
How comfortable are you with discussing mental health at work and with your employer?
User Research Trends
Each team member took notes and annotated their interviews. Once we finished all the interviews we reviewed each other’s annotations and made additional comments so that we were all working with the same thorough understanding of user needs. Below is a snippet from one of the interviews with highlights:
Next, I took the information from all of the users and synthesized it into trends for our team through affinity mapping. The other members reviewed and confirmed the trends.
Accessibility of Resources and Employer Support
Accessibility and employer attitudes were variable. The artifact below shows what users had to say about their experience accessing mental healthcare resources in general. Each color represents a different user.
The second artifact indicates how users felt discussing their mental health with their employers.
Some individuals received support. However, a significant amount of healthcare workers are not receiving the support they need or don’t feel comfortable discussing it at work. Access to resources largely depends on the institutional culture.
Additional Barriers
Our users voiced a handful of barriers they experienced which kept them from accessing mental health resources.
Insurance companies will not cover mental health coverage unless the provider enters a diagnosis code. Some healthcare professionals don’t have a disorder or trauma per se. They simply want a safe space to talk without paying out of pocket or being labeled with a false diagnosis.
2. Users are too busy and exhausted to look through several websites to find credible or helpful platforms — many of which only offer a few service
3. Users are skeptical about finding the right person to help them in the future based on previous negative experiences.
User Preferences
Several healthcare workers had preferred strategies to cope with mental health. Several individuals also volunteered that they wish they had better, more consistent habits around these strategies.
Almost 100% or users said that therapist compatibility was paramount. They looked for the following things when seeking the right match:
User Insights
Two of our users self identified as having strong self care routines and good mental health. One user summed it up nicely when they said,
This user insight later helped us decide which features to develop and gave us inspiration for our brand.
“I want to talk to someone without needing a diagnosis.”
“The biggest thing for me is having the time and energy to sift through all the resources.”
“I had a bad fit with a therapist and it really set me back.”
“It's a lot of small pieces that come together.”
Competitive Analysis and Secondary Research
To round out the research our team studied existing organizations and platforms that provided mental health resources.
Our research lead studied nine competitors including
Doctors Under the Radar
Psychology Today
Calm
Gather facts and note existing features. I synthesized that data and identified trends for the team.
Competitor Research Takeaways
Many organizations offered short term and crisis care
Some offered therapist connection services
Only Doctor’s Under the Radar offered extensive partnership with medical organizations to disrupt stigma
Only Calm offered extensive relaxation activities and services
We observed a lack of long term care and healthy habit building platforms. No site provided comprehensive services.
Prioritizing Features
Once we identified our problem we had multiple competing solutions. We decided we should roll out the ideas in phases. The scope was too great and ultimately we opted to build a few features very well, establish user trust, then develop additional phases as the platform grew.
We revisited our competitive research, as well as our user preferences from our survey and interviews to validate the most pertinent features. Survey respondents and users from interviews named therapy, relaxation, and reading materials as their top preferred strategies.
Survey Results: User Preferences
Interview Results: User Preferences
As planning lead I developed a formal business plan that encompassed our team goals based on our problem statement, solution, prioritized features, and future plans. Our prototype is based on Phase 1.
Design Process
Once we new the features for Phase 1 we began our design process. We started by crafting a safe space that would feel welcoming to users.
Aesthetics
Our team created a mood board to clarify our vision of the reliable and relaxing environment we planned to design.
To Grow and Thrive
We chose the theme of thriving based on our vision for our users. They need to take care of their mental health much like a healthy plant needs water, sunlight, and the occasional soil refertilization in order to grow. We reflected back to the user who shared, “it’s a lot of small pieces that fit together” to help us form this idea.
Our platform would provide short term, habit building, and long term solutions for healthcare workers to not only grow but thrive. In addition we incorporated our growth theme into our features such as our breathing exercise which you can view in our prototype.
We met daily to share sketches, provide feedback, and make improvements. Our interaction lead did most of the sketching which she brought back to the team. However, we each completed a handful of sketches and wireframes to support our interaction lead and meet our project deadlines.
We would start with pen and paper then move to a low and mid fidelity wireframe such as the homepage images you see below.
Frequent Iterations
We implemented changes that would improve the aesthetics and functionality of the site such as streamlining the navigation and adjusting contrast for text readability.
Design Studio Method
Many of our best features were generated in our Design Studio session.
Each member of the team quickly sketched.
We shared our ideas with one another and discussed what was working well vs. what wasn’t
Next we returned to independent sketching to incorporate the group ideas and improve upon our own
The sketches below are from our therapist page brainstorm session. Each circled element is a feature that we used on the final prototype. For example, the sketch on the right shows a map location feature. We came up with eight features in total from this sketch session.
Our interaction design lead made a low fidelity frame then a mid fidelity frame to represent the features more clearly.
Prototype
Our interaction design lead developed most of the design and prototyping in Figma. We prioritized the therapist, relaxation, and educational resources from our Phase 1 plan.
Next Steps
Initial user testing of our prototype revealed insights into visual style choices.
Our interaction lead underlined some headers to make them more prominent. Unfortunately, this made users think the text was hyperlinked. We will bold the text and increase the size to indicate hierarchy instead of underlining.
One user pointed out that there was a significant amount of green which could pose as an accessibility issue for users with color blindness. Additional testing and consideration of color use is needed.
Our biggest priority in Phase 2 is to partner with healthcare institutions and providers to disrupt stigma around mental healthcare and create meaningful change on a large scale.
We would like conduct more extensive usability testing and build out accessibility features. Once we have tackled those tasks our goal is to move on to Phase 2.
Reflection
I really enjoyed the Design Studio process with my team. We had fun together and developed many strong ideas in rapid time. It’s an excellent tool!
Prioritizing features was key. We felt it was better to focus on building a couple things out thoughtfully and thoroughly rather than throwing out a high volume of half baked features. Developing phases helped us plan our role out of the application.
The topic of this project was inspiring and it was rewarding to work towards a solution that would make a positive impact on mental health.