Suede x Atlassian

Suede x Atlassian

About

  • A 48-hour design hackathon initiated by Suede and Atlassian.
    A complete mobile app focusing on helping youngster with mental health issues.

  • The client Batyr is an organisation that focuses on young people's mental health. It is an organisation led by a group of young people, focuses on young people's mental health. It provides unique and engaging programs and mobile application, which are designed to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraging young people to reach out for support.

    Batyr's programs encourage young people to share their stories based on mental health issues positively. Nevertheless, it seeks to improve the experiences of young people with the co-creation of their stories.

  • The challenge of this project is to optimise 'OurHerd' a storytelling App released by Batyr that empowers young people to positively share their stories based on mental health issues and reduce their stigma surrounding mental health.

    To understand Batyr's users and consider the suggestion given by the client —

    “a chatbot is a great opportunity to gain more insights from young users regarding to their daily habits, interactions with friends and families, and how their experiences can impact their mental health.”

    To propose a solution to create a more seamless and interactive experience that will support users to co-create their stories in the app.

  • Understanding our client → gathering data → research on mental health → identifying issues
    → primary research: online ethnography and competitor analysis → identifying user needs →
    design statement and scope → secondary research: design precedence and market research →
    design iterations → proposal → identifying future possibilities

Research

Batyr has identified the opportunity developing a chatbot into their app to help users when needed; however, we questioned whether a chatbot would really a good opportunity? In doing so, we did some literature research on mental health and also the association of chatbots with mental health sufferers. After research, we found that the functions that chatbots currently have are still limited (Analytics Indian Magazine, 2020). Unlike humans, chatbots show lack of empathy and can never be judgmental on emotions and feelings, which is crucial in helping out mental health sufferers. The security risk of chatbots is still a trendy topic among the public (SiteLock, 2019). Nevertheless, privacy is very important to our identified end-users.

Literature research

Our initial research focused on why users are reluctant to reach out for help and share their stories related to mental health issues. We found a lack of user participation and engagements in the current 'OurHerd' app. Further, according to our research, a paper by Henderson et al. (2013) state that the causes and factors of increase in delay and avoidance of mental health treatment could be:

Lack of knowledge to identify features of mental illness

Individuals often find themselves seeking treatment care and support after they have experienced significant stigma and symptoms. An observations shows the effectiveness of mental health awareness courses in a smaller scale increases individuals’ access to treatments.

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Ignorance about how to access treatment

Globally 70% people worldwide with mental illness did not receive treatment.

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Expectation of discrimination against people diagnosed with mental illness

Discrimination discourage individuals and resulted in resistance from seeking healthcare treatment. Individuals refuses treatments from healthcare providers due to fears of getting abused and poor services. Poor experience with mental health professionals might prevent individuals from seeking treatment.

Prejudice against people who have mental illness

Stigma and discriminatory attitudes in society are associated with the cause of repulsion to seek support and treatment. Prejudice and Exclusion decreases individuals intention to seek help, meanwhile support and tolerance from community increases individual’s intentions to seek for support.

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With the literature research done on mental illness and the reluctant of reaching help. We identified our design scope and came out with a problem statement to address.

“ How can we design an interactive and engaging product/service that addresses the issues to encourage young mental health sufferers to willingly share their stories and experiences in building a safer and stronger community?”

Competitor analysis

After analysing all competitors, a score was given for each category from a scale of 1-5 along with a visual colour representation. An overall score was calculated, representing how well each apps / platform is able to address the identified user issues and needs.

  • All competitors pay great attention to "user privacy". According to research, people with mental illness are likely to be introverted, and nearly 60% of people with a mental problem would not seek help from professionals directly (Black Dog Institute, 2021). Therefore, for this community, "privacy" plays a huge role.

  • Competitors provide few direct connections with professional psychological organisations within their apps. Young people need to walk out and seek help when they have any kind of mental issues. Therefore, we explored that it would be an opportunity for Batyr to cooperate with experts in the App.

  • According to research, people are lack of knowledge to identify features of mental illnesses. Further, most of the competitors are not focusing on educating people about mental health issues.

  • Some competitors put third-party contact information on their apps to promptly facilitate users who need mental assistance to contact professionals. However, research has found that many people would not be aware that they have mental problems in time.

Target audience

The design brief wanted us to target young people / generations in the creation to storytelling. However, what is the exact age gap? We decided to focus on Young Australians between 18 – 24 Years Old age gap. People in this age gap are prone to suffer from mental illness.

During our research, we have identified that Mental Health App User are categorised into 2 types :

People whom have overcome their mental illness

They have rich experience in fighting mental illness.

By sharing their stories, they help provides directions and confidence for those who are still struggling.

People whom are still suffering from mental illness

People who are in a low mood or are suffering from mental illness are often introverted. They tend to feel lonely and hopeless.

If someone can tell them that they are not alone and that there are other people out there who are going through the same thing that they are going through and are willing to talk to them, it will help a lot in their recovery.

Design

After our discovery; we decided to revamp the old app and design a new app that addresses those issues identified.

An all-in-one mental health support app that allows user to cooperate with psychological experts, have the chance to interact with doctors or people who have similar issues before, reach out and speak out, learn everything about mental health, have a daily self-testing system, track their mood in an Interactive story-sharing community.

Typography

Colours

User flow

yep, it’s a link

Join the Herd

Login never been this easy, with social media accounts or even unlock the app via face id.

Customisable profile

We value personal privacy as much as you do, create and customise your own avatar to begin your journey with us. My Profile navigates to My Garden, My Bookmarks, My Posts and many more.

All-in-one feed

What’s the point of story-telling when you’re not listening? We introduce you the Podcast and Live functions; whether it be listening to user’s experiences, learning about how to cope with mental health or joining a live group-sharing room facilitated by our professionals, sharing stories have never been easier!

Daily mood tracker

Different from any other mental health support apps in the market, WeHerd allows you to freely track your daily mood accurately using our in-app questions (developed by field experts) that focuses on your overall mental health level (rather than only certain mental health issues). Users will receive in-app rewards that will contribute towards My Garden; encouraging users to build and manage a virtual community together.

Co-create & manage a community

WeHerd introduces you the first ever mental health app that incorporates co-create mini game that encourages users to help each other manage their gardens (with rewards) by simple easy tasks such as ploughing, seeding and watering. Users are able to visit a random garden (managed by another user) then visit their WeHerd profile encouraging story reading and engagement.

Discover more

Explore the app and you’ll find functions that cater your personal preference; whether it be learning more about mental health through articles, find out more about third party organisations that respectively cater for different kind of mental healths, or seek for an immediate helpline.

- Thank you -