MindBud
UI Design + UX Research
Apr-Jun, 2022
OVERVIEW
Over 10 weeks, my team and I designed a mental health app using the startup concept. By considering value propositions and business models while following user-centered design methods, we designed the MVP of our product, MindBud, a mobile app that leverages AI to assist users in forming connections online and learning about mental health knowledge.
Role --- UI/UX Designer
Scope --- UI Design, Interaction Design, UX Research, Branding, Product Thinking
Team --- Han Bao, Chia-yu Chang, Jennifer Nunez, Jen Vo
Platform --- Mobile app
Tool --- Figma, FigJam, Miro, Unbounce, Google Adwords, Google Sheets, Google Slides
Interact with MindBud mobile app Prototype 😌
Why did we choose a MENTAL HEALTH topic?
Due to current societal trends and the impact of the pandemic, the amount of people affected by mental health issues has only been increasing, making it more challenging to find the best resources & people who understand.
Currently factors such as the high cost of mental health treatments, lack of understanding within society, rise of telehealth, and providing opportunities for technology-based forms of online mental health support.
By conducting user research and analyzing test results, my team and I could design a mobile product that not only fitted the current market but also helped users to fight against mental health challenges and form a supporting online community.
What are the CURRENT PROBLEMS?
We did online research and user research to find the current problems and understand the target audience better.
Online Research
5 key insights from online research:
Barriers to seeking help
Difficulty accessing support, mistrust, communicating distress (source)
Access to medical care
4.9 million are unable to access medical care (source).
Digital peer support
Proven to have clinical effectiveness on individuals (source)
4 dimensions of recovery
Health, home, purpose, community (source)
User Research
Our target audience is people who deal with mental health issues. We surveyed 35 individuals with 47.1% identifying them as male and 47.1% identifying them as female. The majority of participants (97.1%) are aged 18 - 25 years old. By collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data, we found out:
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People’s mental health issues are contributed to various reasons, no two people experience the exact same experience.
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For communication methods, people prefer text (57.1%) and voice (45.7%) over video.
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Compared with opening up (20% very comfortable), people tend to be more comfortable with offering help ( 42.9% very comfortable) to people with similar mental health experiences.
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Stigma (being viewed as weak) is one of the biggest barriers preventing people from seeking out help, especially males.
For people who are dealing with mental health issues, we concluded their needs and desires:
No judgments
—— “I am worried about others may not care I don't want others to judge my conditions.”
Prefer professional treatments
—— “A concern I have is if I am giving the right help they need, I’m not an expert and I would not want to pose as one.”
Find someone with similar background to share
—— “Not being a person of color or queer and not understanding the obstacles I have faced.”
More affordable treatments
—— “I used to be in therapy and on medication but no longer have health insurance so I’ve been trying to handle it on my own.”
Build trust and stable relationships online
—— “I felt it was better to communicate with people I know and trust in person rather than online.”
How might we....
Through the online researching + user research, we identified three main problems and began to brainstorm solutions:
How might we ensure users have a safe and private place without inappropriate judgment to share their experiences?
How might we provide affordable and professional service for our users?
How might we address stigma in help-seeking for people with mental health conditions to better assist them with getting support?
Finding the SOLUTION: what is our opportunity gap?
Personas
Before we brainstorm solutions, we identified and exploded 3 stakeholders (primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders) that represent how different perspectives participate in mental health issues:
Primary Stakeholder
Secondary Stakeholder
Tertiary Stakeholder
Storyboarding + Interviews
We brainstormed out 2 solutions for each “how might we” question. Utilizing the primary stakeholder, Jake, we created storyboards to illustrate each solution and recruited 7 participants to give feedback on the ideas.
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6/7 interviewees supported the #2 concept “AI Chatbot Assistance to Create a Judgment-Free Environment”, because it creates a sense of safety, acceptance, and understanding; 6/7 interviewees supported #5 concept “Overcoming Societal Stigma Through Interactive Mental Health Education”, because the knowledge could provide more informed support and normalize mental health.
By interviewing 5 mental health patients (primary stakeholders) and 2 family/friends of mental health patients (secondary stakeholders), we conclude the interview with 5 insights:
Acceptance vs. Denial
3/5 primary interviewees experience either/both stages
"It’s about a relationship you have with yourself. ”
Safety & Privacy
3/7 interviewees express the need for safety and privacy
“People need to be safe in their own body and safe in their own space.”
Understanding from Others
7/7 interviewees discuss how it takes a lot of understanding from others to accept them
“I was told to suck it up…which I did.”
Lack of Awareness/knowledge
5/7 interviewees express there exists a lack of awareness of mental health conditions
“People need to be safe in their own body and safe in their own space.”
Accessibility & Affordability
7/7 interviewees express that access and cost to support are big barriers
“I tried professional therapy once, but it is too expensive for me, especially without insurance.”
Competitive Analysis
To find the opportunity gap, my team and I found 7 competitors in the market to compare and contrast from 8 different aspects: Talk to peers, affordability, privacy, safety, personalization, AI customization, AI helpfulness, and educational lessons.
In those current solutions, we found that apps that have AI feature all lack communication with peers feature, while apps that have a communication feature tend to lack an AI feature as well, so there exists an opportunity gap. Additionally, for education lessons, not all apps provide full-fledged courses that cater to the user’s needs.
💡!! New IDEA → AI Assistants + Education + Community !!💡
We found an opportunity to pivot and combine AI, education, and community because both our AI idea and a community feature are supported by our insights, having the potential to meet the needs of our primary and secondary stakeholders.
The AI assistant can foster a sense of being accepted, acknowledged, and being understood, providing safety from judgment. It can provide more knowledge about an individual’s condition through facilitating interactive lessons for both primary and secondary stakeholders, which could lead to more acceptance and awareness for both stakeholders. And a peer community allows individuals to find others who understand and relate to their experiences, creating a space of acceptance.
AI assistants + Education + Community
MindBud sets out to encompass communication with peers, AI assistants, education lessons, while being affordable, private, safe, and personalized.
VALIDATE Our Concept
Option A: AI + Education
Option B: AI + Education + Community
After running ads for 8 days in the United States, as a result, the conversion rate shows that our hypothetical concept was supported.
A/B Testing for Landing page - Option B ✅
At this stage, my team and I needed to test the concept to validate whether our assumption has a real interest in the market. We decided to test existing solutions within the market (Option A: AI+Education) against our product, MindBud, a novel solution (Option B: AI+Education+Community), to confirm whether users have the desire to communicate with peers while educating with AI.
We hypothesize that：
Mental health patients would be comfortable using an app that both serves as a personal space (education) to learn about mental health and as a social space (community) to connect with others. We wanted to understand if our competitors only offered education because people preferred to separate personal and social services.
We used the concept-centered probe to perform A/B Testing, where we created two separate ads for our two separate service ideas and their corresponding landing pages on Unbounce. We employed Google Adwords to quantify our data. The impression and click rate increased dramatically by utilizing about 10 keywords for each landing page.
Our MISSION & CONCEPT
Our goal is to help people who deal with mental health challenges by leveraging AI-assisted technology to provide personalized educational resources and online matched-peer support networks.
MindBud's BRANDING
We wanted to create an app that would foster a sense of calm and stability for users through the use of muted colors and rounder typefaces. We named our app MindBud as a play on words where “bud” can refer to both growth and friends.
MindBud's DESIGN PROCESS
Step 1: User Flow
After we confirmed our concept, my team and I started to create the user flow as the first design step to construct clear and logical navigation paths for users to explore and use our product. There were five main parts as we formed the connected MindBud system: Onboarding, Home & Profile, Buddy Page, AI & Buddy Chat, and Education.
Step 2: Wireframe
We moved on to create the digital wireframes for the main features. My team and I lay out the content and functionality of 5 main parts in Figma, which takes into account users' needs and user journeys. The wireframe allowed us to visualize each feature, how page elements relate to one another function, and the interaction between interfaces and users.
Step 3: Usability testing on MVP
We invited 2 early adopters whom we interviewed and tested our storyboards to participate in usability testing in order to:​
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Understand what people think about interacting with an AI, and how comfortable they are with opening up to the AI
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Understand what they think about getting matched with others using AI
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Understand how comfortable they are with talking to others they’ve just met
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Test another novel idea of AI-facilitated lessons – our competitors only used AI to suggest lessons
Iterations & Analysis
After the first round of usability testing on MVP, we analyzed and iterated the lo-fi prototypes based on interviewees’ feedback and tested the iterated lo-fi prototypes with the same interviewees for the second round of MVP testing. We iterated MVP based on 3 perspectives:
1. Customized AI Assistant:
Based on Interviewee A’s feedback in 1st round, we iterated on the lo-fi to allow users to customize their AI as it would provide users with more comfortable and personalized experiences.
2. Match-made Friend:
Based on Interviewee A’s feedback, we iterated on low-fi to keep anonymous for peer matching. Interviewee B had a very positive response to that and suggested that interests should be specific so as to more accurately match users.
3. Educational Practices:
Interviewee B’s reflected the steps of educational practices were not clear. Thus, we added examples for users who take educational lessons for the first time.
Both interviewees showed positive feedback on our iterations. After two usability tests on MVP, we gain valuable insights into some of the specifications of our core features. The feedback and outcomes of testing provides clearer direction for us to develop features for the product and also led us to consider more on how to design the system to work as a whole.
Step 4: Design System
My team and I worked on building up the design system before we started to design the high-fidelity prototype because the design system can provide a single source and standard of components, text, layout, and unify disjointed experiences, which led us to create visually cohesive interfaces. The design system increased our efficiency in designing hi-fi prototypes and made us easier to collaborate.
✨ Step 5: FINAL DESIGN✨
We developed MindBud, a mental health app that leverages AI assistance to help users with forming supportive friendships and guide users through interactive, science-based, personalized lessons about mental health.
We prioritized the core features of Onboarding, AI chat, Buddy matching, Buddy chat, New Buddy, and Education, to create a safe and private space for users to share experiences and feel comfortable and accepted.
Onboarding
Users can create an account by signing up with an email and choose or customize the AI assistant representative to have a more personalized experience throughout the app.
AI Chat
MindBud is the AI assistant that does the hard work for our users. AI assistant learns about users’ unique background, experience, and interests.
Buddy Match
After learning about the individual, it assists them with forming accepting relationships by matching them with others based on their shared experiences and interests, ultimately reducing barriers of uncertainty and mistrust in forming online support networks.
Buddy Chat
Users can chat with those they’ve matched with in one-on-one conversations
New Buddy
Users can request to be matched with a new buddy, either by:
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Letting the AI use the information it’s learned about the user
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Or manually inputting the attributes they want the AI to match on
Education
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The AI will also recommend personalized lessons about the individual’s mental health and be there to facilitate the interactive steps
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Unlock all personalized education lessons for $9.99
Product Video Pitch
BUSINESS: How do we make money?
Value Flow
For the current market, we found there are many tensions between patients and mental health Apps powered by AI. There are mainly 3 tensions:
Tension 1: High costs for professional treatments, but low accessibility. The free version does not provide personalized treatments.
Tension 2: Some insurance companies can not cover it.
Tension 3: Hard to establish an emotional relationship with AI. The emotional support provided by AI is not sufficient or just limited.
To break these tensions, Mindbud employs AI as a user’s assistant in their self-growth journey. In the safe space facilitated by AI, users can connect with others and gain emotional support.
Considering the affordability, MindBud AI will also recommend personalized and science-based lessons and guide you throughout the entire process. In that case, users can still get interactive, personalized, and scientific treatment in Mindbud anytime, but at relatively low costs compared to traditional professional therapy.
Business Model
MindBud is a freemium business model in which users would pay a $9.99/month subscription fee to unlock educational lessons. We’ve chosen to make the most unique selling point of our app, AI-facilitated match-making, free for users so that they’ll have access to the most valuable feature of our app.
REFLECTION
1. How to find opportunities in the market.
Through this project, I learned how to start a startup and stand in a business perspective to create an application. I learned how to find opportunity gaps in the current market and stand in users’ shoes to discover the business opportunity, which led me to think about what is the user's needs and desires.
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2. Design is a team sport.
A good team can facilitate productivity and efficiency. Have to admit this is the most brilliant team I have ever worked with. Everyone has creative thoughts. We share design experiences and insights to produce a better design. We support and help each other when there is a problem.