Project Summary

Problem:

Users struggle with both maintaining mental health and detaching from their mobile devices.  With more wellness apps being available, it makes it harder to decrease screen time.

Solution:

With the adoption of voice assistants in the home, these tools could be leveraged to tackle this problem.  A voice user interface would help users with self-reflection, all without having to input data on a mobile device.

Results: 

In this project, I designed a new voice user interface to help users with mental health and answer the question: “Can talking to a robot really help?”

The Challenge:

• Understand the users and the challenges the user is facing in the mental health space.

• Learn what comparable applications are doing in the space, what features are being leveraged, and what features I could potentially leverage in a new design.

• Understand how users are interacting with digital assistants, the current user path, the pain points, and the areas of opportunity.

• Design a new voice user interface that helps users with mental health, by creating moments of self-reflection.

The Approach:

Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis:

To gain insights on the mental health space by researching mental health organizations, digital and non-digital mental health Tools, and other published articles.

Interviews & Subject Matter Expert Interview:

To understand how users are interacting with digital assistants, the current user path, the pain points, and the areas of opportunity.

Prototyping:

To illustrate three different user paths based on the recommendations of the research participants.

Usability Testing:

To gain insights on the pain points and areas of opportunity for the three prototypes.

Interactive Prototyping & Presentation:

To communicate my findings and recommendations for the project.

The Results:

• There are a lot of wellness apps in the space, if want to meditate for an hour, that app already exists.

• Users who use digital assistants love digital assistants.  They are looking for new ways to leverage them in their day-to-day lives.

• While talking to digital assistants, people know they are not talking to a human, but it is still important that it cares.

• Different users wanted different things.  The voice user interface had to be responsive to how the user was feeling.

Final Thoughts:

Asking yourself three questions a day can be a powerful experience. It can be life-changing. I believe that my voice user interface can create moments of self-reflection and is one digital tool that can help improve your mental health.