Mindset

2021

Role

UX/UI Designer

TEAM

  • Nnamdi Nwaigwe - Founder & CEO
  • Ke Bryant - Psychologist

Length

3 weeks

Problem

Mindset's focus is scalable vulnerability, meaning they want users to have diverse options when it comes to understanding their mental state. With a community and marketplace created, how might we enable users to check in with themselves and their emotional health?
  1. Context
  2. Research
  3. Original Concept
  4. Iterations
  5. Final Reflections
  6. Outcomes & Reflections

1. Context

Understanding the negative impact social media can have, Mindset aims to take a healthier approach by focusing on mental wellness through individual and community means.

Users can make connections with others, create posts, join communities, utilize various free and paid resources, and take control of their own mental health journey. I was tasked with creating a mood tracker for users to be able to check in with themselves and their emotional health.

Mindset was previously named a2i, so you will see the previous name on older screenshots

2. Research

User Feedback

After jumping into the app to understand how it worked for myself, I reviewed feedback from existing users to gather insights and synthesize the data. Somethings that stood out for me were:
  • The app had a developed features focused on community but lacked the space for users to understand themselves and their own emotions.
  • Due to this lack of personal reflective space, users didn't make public posts because they were having trouble doing basic inner work.
  • The resources and community aspects overwhelmed users, especially those who were at the beginning of their mental health journey.

In it's original days, Mindset focused on the community and marketplace.

Competitive Analysis

I took a look at other mental health focused applications to identify how what worked and didn't work with existing mood trackers.
  • Quite a few lacked the ability to check-in/track mood multiples times a day
  • Users found virtual blank notebooks to be overwhelming
  • Once a user recorded their mood, there were no resources to assist with low moods.

3. Original Concept

The early designs had the mood tracker incorporated as a option to add to a regular post on the app.
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While we thought this may be a seamless integration, when we put it through a round of user testing, we quickly found out this was not the case.

  • Adding your mood to the post took too many steps
  • This forced users to post publicly which was not something everyone was comfortable with

4. Iterations

Mood options on the home page

We experimented putting the mood tracker on the landing page to prompt users when they first enter the app.

While users appreciate how quick and simple the process was, the feedback we received showed that the tracking needed to be fleshed out more.

  • Mood tracker was a distraction as users scrolled through the feed and felt like it was merging a personal prompt with something more public.
  • Lacking any sort of understanding of mood history and journey.

Separate section for mood tracker

We wanted users to find a comfortable and private space on the app for them to check in with themselves. In this iteration, the mood tracker had:

  • It's own section that users could easily access from the main navigation bar.
  • Historical data on their past moods from the week, month, and year.
  • Weekly Mood Summary shown in the graph at the bottom.


User testing showed us the following:

  • Users wanted to be able to see the change in their mood throughout the day.
  • 7 moods was not an accurate representation of the moods humans experience in reality.
  • Users didn't find any use in the analytical graph of the Weekly Mood Summary

Diverse mood options & 'at a glance' view

Collaborating with our Psychologist, we diversified the mood options for a wide range to select from. We also removed the original bar graph and replaced it with an 'at a glance' view as users appreciated the historical insight to their emotions.

From discussing as a team, we realized the following:

  • A wider range of emotions to select from meant it was more difficult for us to track to understand how we could better help those experiencing moods on the lower end. So we looked into grouping emotions together.
  • We wanted to provide resources especially for those users who were tracking lower moods constantly.

From our last round of user testing we learned:

  • While additional moods were great, some users felt analysis paralysis and felt confused on what to select.
  • Users like the at a glance mood review but felt like the immediate month view was overwhelming.
  • Users wanted to know how they could support themselves

5. Final Designs

  • Naming is 'Check-In' as it's a more realistic term
  • Displaying the 2 emotions the user selects on the Check-In page
  • Showing their average moods from the week, user can select the calendar to view the full month
  • Displaying main resources so users have a starting place and don't have to go searching
  • Users can view when they've changed their moods throughout the day
  • They can also view what they did in the app when feeling a certain way for them to understand how the type of content they view changes depending on their mood
  • Users are able to select up to 2 moods at a time
  • Moods are categorized from very happy to angry and when an emojii is selected, they have more emotions to select from
  • Users can also select the intensity of their moods
  • Resources are always readily available on the main Check-In page but when a user tracks a low mood for multiple days in a row, the Help prompt will appear.
  • Users can reach out to their Inner Circle - a group of people they feel comfortable with on the app that they've pre-selected.
  • They can also reach out to the mental health advisors through Mindset's partner, First Response Call Solution.
  • Additionally, users can make use of the numerous hotlines available.T=

6. Outcome & Reflections

Outcomes

After launch, we noticed a considerable increase in activity on the app. Users were making use of the new feature and we received positive feedback on how helpful it was too have multiple moods to select from, record their mood changes, to have a place to reflect on and understand their emotional health, and what steps they could take after.
We love a success story!

  • Mindset has 2000+ users and we can see that 60% of users are tracking their mood at least once daily
  • 50% of of that group are inputting multiple moods at once

Reflections

  • Running co-design working sessions with the Founder, developer and the psychologist helped the team align on requirements and enabled us to be efficient (which was needed for a short timeline).
  • Working with developers as early as possible helped to identify measuring success earlier on in the process for future iterations
  • Along with user testing, collaborating with SME such as our psychologist is crucial as it enabled me to have a deeper understanding of the topic and ensure that the Check-In feature replicated the reality of how humans experience emotions.