Overview
I had the opportunity to work with It's Ok Now organization whose main focus was on delivering a coping mechanism for individuals who suffer from anxiety, depression,
and other mental illnesses. The audience that the organization was targeting was predominantly teenagers in high school.
About
It's Ok Now is a non-profit organization based in the Bay Area whose main focuses were on mental health and counseling. They wanted to create a mobile application
that provided teen support and counseling for mainly high school students who are suffering from anxiety and depression.
The Problem
As a mobile solution for stress and anxiety, It's Ok Now mobile app delivers a concentration track for teens who are wanting to reduce negative thoughts and channel
their inner energy through a game formatted application.
MVP
A game formatted mobile application that consists of a
library of resources that include: social forums, mentoring
chats, and a track-based curriculum to help teenagers
manage their mental health.
Design Process
Define
After the initial agreement with It's Ok Now, and the project to
build a mobile application set in place, our team had created
an affinity diagram in planning out the type of mobile app to
build out.
In getting a clearer understanding of teenagers who are currently
experiencing different forms of anxiety and depression, our team had
interviewed local high school students on how they currently cope
with their anxiety. Our group collected interviews of a total of 25
participants.
As a development objective, the client had given us a list of existing mobile apps as a guideline to what (UX, UI, mobile features, and overall content) they wanted us to
create for them. Out of all the apps given, our team chose: Wysa, PTSD Coach, and Happify that would help guide our design decisions moving forward in the process.
Integrated with the research all of us did, we acted on the following: .
Competitive Analysis
Building a User Persona
Although quantitative data was established, our group thought it was also important to really understand who our audience was and who we were designing for. We
created both a male and female persona in presenting how both genders experience life differently. By identifying our users, it gave us more of a grasp on what relevant
things to implement during the development of the mobile app.
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After identifying the user persona and getting a
better understanding of our audience, we laid out the
user's step-by-step journey on using the mobile app in
a user flow.
Design
After all the brainstorming, research, and persona creation, our group at this stage started converting everything onto mockup wireframes. We finally came to an
agreement of the idea to implement avatars, mood statistics, and a full learning track interface. The app would consist of 4 main features: Learn, Social, Mentor, and
Playlist.
Moodboard | UI Inspirations
Style Guide
Validate | Final UI Prototype
In the final stages of the project, our group had delivered the final high-fidelity prototype screens for our client It's Ok Now. After the work being approved by the
organizers, they stated that they were to inform us about future responses to the app.
Next Steps
Working with It's Ok Now organization was a great and unique opportunity for our group. The passion for change shown by this organization had really driven our team to produce a product that not only they would be appreciative of, but also kids who are in need of guidance. As for business matters, It's Ok Now had presented the prototype to key figures in the industry and had informed us that things looked positive for early funding.
Thanks for reading!
