Pre Qualification 2.0

1. Project Overview

   • Role: Lead UX/UI Designer

   • Team:

     • Lead UX/UI Designer

     • Research Analyst

     • Design Systems Designer

     • Product Manager

     • Developers

   • Company: Uplift

 2. Approach

• Inspiration

• Discovery: Research, Interviews

• Ideation: Persona Development, Extremes, Strategy Development

• Design: Rapid Prototyping, User Journey, Wireframes, High Fidelity Screens

3. Results

• Effectively facilitated 3 workshops involving various stakeholder.

• Organized user testing including over 300 participants.

• Introduced an estimator tool feature with over 30% user interaction.

• Anonymous chat

• Anonymous social media 

• Panic button/help button in various physical locations

• Rewind room

• Group of therapist make dorm calls

• All freshmen required to go to a session with UCS

• Mental health day-pass

• Everyone is assigned a wellness counselor/advisor 

While ideas like “No classes can give HW” is certainly tempting and will most likely be successful at lessening the short term stress of students, I turned to some of the more feasible solutions such as anonymous chat, panic button in various physical locations, a rewind room, assigning wellness counselor to students, QR code to access a digital panic button, and maybe yoga classes.

I briefly considered a rewind room— a physical space with space for mediation, arts and craft, various distractions and comforts, with a panic button. However, later from my interviews I learned that while such a room might help with wellness and stress management in general, a person experiencing significant mental distress will be unlikely to leave their room/current location to go into a public space. 

I knew I wanted to design an app, because

(1) the ability for a digital platform to consumed in a more widespread manner

(2) the ease of transporting information or the service on a phone

(3) its relatively low cost to the university.

I was previously aware of mental health focused apps on the market such as Calm, MoodTracker, and BetterHelp, but there are some stressors that are specific to college students, and even more specific to Boston College students. 

I landed back onto the self-assessment app idea. Not only because of the reasons I listed before (1) the ability for a digital platform to consumed in a more widespread manner (2) the ease of transporting information or the service on a phone (3) its relatively low cost to the university, but also when asked to describe the situation when they experienced distress, all of my interviewees said no matter where they are, they always have their phone with them (as do most of us at most times). What better tool is there to help us when we feel our worst than the tool we always carry with us? And I realized I could incorporate a few more ideas into the app as well, such as the anonymous chat and the panic button.

4. Discovery

research

It turns out, there is a platform called YOU at College, that is a portal, with tools, content and resources for students, that is specifically tailored for the institute that purchase this platform for its students’ use. One thing I found really cool was their “Reality Check” surveys. It provides the students who take these surveys with well-being evaluations on their daily lives and habits. And then it directs them to relevant resources on campus or articles to help improve those aspects of their lives.  

YOU at College is not marketed as a “mental health” tool. Instead, it discusses mental health as just one part of well-being and academic success. The upside is that students might not visit the platform thinking they have a mental health issue, but through addressing other issues, such as physical health or sleeping problems, learn that all areas of wellness are intertwined, which means it can potentially draw in more users. However, one thing that it neglects is solution or help in the cases of immediate crisis. 

Interviews

One of the biggest challenges I faced was interviews and learning how to ask the right questions.

Asking about their mental health and potential mental struggles is a very sensitive topic that is so unique to the individual experience. I was asking about some of their hardest times at Boston College, and asking them “why” on top of a heavy answer sometimes seemed out of line.

“ While [University Counseling Services] is a really good resource, it's not going to help you if you can’t help yourself.”

- D. Peng ‘19

From the interviews, two interesting focus points emerged:

1. The struggle of seeking out help especially in the cases when one needed to advocate for themselves.

   • contacting UCS, BCPD, and/or peers while in personal crisis

2. The difficulty in finding different resources on campus.

   • Information is spread across the Boston College website. Lack of comprehensive list of resources available for students.

5. Ideation

The main target users would be Boston College students experiencing a personal crisis, experiencing immediate stress, anxiety, or depression, and who want to learn to recognize what they are going through, because they wants to seek out the best available help system for them. I realized the best way to help is to provide support and tools for the individual to help themselves.

Help@BC

Help@BC would be an app containing a short questionnaire. A student in immediate distress would answer questions regarding their current state of mind, such as general diagnostic questions such as “Are you feeling shortness of breath, rapid or pounding heart rate?” to situational questions such as “Is anyone in the house with you?” or “Do you have a family, friend, or a loved one that you can confide in?”

Then, according to their answers, Help@BC will suggest concrete steps to

1) ease distress

2) encourage support network

3) direct the student to relevant resources on campus.

The answers would vary accordingly to the users need. For example, a student who is feeling momentarily overwhelmed while preparing for an important presentation for the next day might need: a study break, short mediation session, words of encouragement, a link to presentation tips. While a student who is in the middle of having a panic attack and is in danger of hurting themselves have a whole different set of needs. 

I assumed that the mainstream users would be students feeling moments of panic, anxiety, and/or depression in regards to their academic, social, or professional lives.

extremes

I assumed that the mainstream users would be students feeling moments of panic, anxiety, and/or depression in regards to their academic, social, or professional lives. But I needed to think about the extremes.

How can I accommodate users who is in such distress that they are in danger of hurting themselves or others? 

I found the answer from an app that already exists called notOK. It is a suicide prevention app that features a digital panic button that can be activated to let close friends, families and support network know when help is needed. The user can add up to five trusted contact, so when they hit the button, a message reading “Hey, I’m not OK! Please call, text, or come find me” along with their current GPS location is sent to their contacts.

I decided adopt this idea to apply it to Help@BC in two ways:

1) Panic Button at the beginning of the survey that explicitly asks if they are in need of immediate medical help. It will be a button to contact BCPD and the GPS location would be sent to BCPD.

2) implementation of a message automatically sending to support network. 

5. Design

Rapid Prototyping, Journey mapping

I realize that content is really important for my prototype. So I first quickly laid out the journey of a potential user. I wrote down what kind of general prompt/idea each screen would hold and organized it in a journey map that made sense for the user.

Low-fidelity wireframe & Prototype

After I got a general sense of the journey my user would take, I created a short low-fidelity prototype so that my users could get a sense of how they would move through the app.

Above are some screen shots of the low-fidelity prototype. A clickable version is available at the link below!

It doesn’t contain any UI or design elements. I quickly realized (as not being a medical professional) I needed help on the content, so I referenced various mental health screening platforms such as University of Massachusetts Medical School's mental health screening (screening.mentalhealthscreening.org) as well as Calm Harm, an app to help resist the urge of self-harm by “riding our the wave” by using various strategies. I also took inspiration from NotOK, a suicide prevention app that features a digital panic button that can be activated to let close friends, families and support network know when help is needed. 

After feedback from three different potential user, I decided to include the “I want to talk now” alongside the self-assessment, and removed the  “what is troubling you the most?” and “what methods have you tried.” One of my extreme users (Interview 2) commented that it could come off as insensitive, as well as too time consuming for someone in distress. 

High-fidelity wireframe

Key takeaways:

1. I think it is important to emphasize that this app (or any other app) cannot replace traditional therapy and assessments and treatment of mental health concerns has to be done by medical professionals.

2. But my goal is to hopefully make the experience of finding out ways to ease distress in times of crisis, seeking out relevant help, and building a support network for Boston College students easier.