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Mental Exercise
User research and UX design
Duration:
Software:
Team :
1 month
Prasenjeet Kharat
Mental Exercise is a research conducted on mental health issues. When life gets too hectic, its important to find a moment of peace for our minds. That's why I created this concept for application, Mental Exercise self- help social support for people who desire to improve their social engagement.
Problem statement
People facing mental health issues lack social support due to negligence towards mental health and desire to improve their social engagement.
Primary Research
• What? (Defining the problem) | What is Mental Issue?
​Like physical health, mental health is also important for good and sound being. Mental health includes a person’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how a person thinks, feels, and also acts. Having sound mental health is important as it determines how a person can handle stress, make sound choices, and how he/she interacts with others. Mental health is important for the social well-being of a person at every stage in life, from childhood to adolescence and even beyond.
• Why? (Describing the reason for the problem's occurrence)
​The reasons why mental health issues are increasing day by day
- Due to social media and other engaging apps, children and adults, both are getting away from the real world and entering the reel world.
- The reason they aren't connected with the around them whom they see in day to day life.
- Due to less communication or not encouraging themselves and others in any other activity, people are becoming intolerant to society, having anxiety issues, increased stress, loss of supportive relationships with friends, extended family members, mentors, etc.
- Some of the reasons such as imbalanced work and personal life, financial instability due to job loss, increasing competitions and job securities, etc can reflect in a person's mental health.
- Teens and adults are so obsessed with junk food and intake of calories. This makes physically unfit. Lack of meditation and exercise also affects the mental health.
• When? (Identifying when the problem began or was first noticed)
​- People are becoming intolerant to society, having anxiety issues, increased stress, loss of supportive relationships with friends, extended family members, mentors, etc.
- This issue has scaled up since the COVID-19 pandemic. Unprecedented school closures, loss of face-to-face support systems, enforced isolation, disrupted routines, family problems and more have created an environment of stress, anxiety, and fear that has triggered or worsened adolescent mental health issues.
- Many studies have linked isolation and loneliness to an increased risk for depression, anxiety, substance use and eating disorders, and other mental health problems.
- Isolation from their peers is especially difficult for adolescents and may increase suicide ideation in that population.
• Where? (Identifying place of the problem's first occurrence or sighting) and Who? (Understanding the person or thing that the problem affects)
​- People are becoming intolerant and this observed at homes, around residential areas, offices, schools, in market stores, while travelling, etc.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is information gathered from previously conducted studies, also known as desk research or, in academic contexts, literature review, refers to the act of gathering prior research findings and other relevant information related to a new project. It is a foundational part of any emerging research project and provides the project with background and context.
Research studied to see how people faced different mental health issues in relationship, covid-19, finances, life disruption.
Research studied to see what people do in their daily routines for self care and improve their mental health.
Discover stage
​A discovery is a preliminary phase in the UX-design process that involves researching the problem space, framing the problem(s) to be solved, and gathering enough evidence and initial direction on what to do next.
Stakeholders
​• What do we want to do? If everything goes perfect, where will we be in a year?
Create complete awareness for mental health issues and access to easy consultations.
Improve people's mental health with constant help from the health professionals.
Have events and lively interactions on a regular basis.
Help people have to engage themselves within the society and also families.
In few years' time mental health will no more be a social stigma.
• For whom?
For people are socially inactive and due to which suffer loneliness and depression.
• What are the business goals?
Usually, people in India feel mental issues and depression are stigma and there's no such thing to be discussed or to be cured. Hence some of them lack support from the society and family. They don't usually consult any therapist because of un-acceptance.
The main goal from this app is to connect such people with the therapists and also help them to become social with the people with same interests.
Competitors
I started doing competitive research to gather information of similar application that are available in market that helps people in solving their mental health problems. Above table shows the name of application that i choose to do research on and then I separated their strong and pain points the users faces so to understand what they lack in and are good at.
After studying all this I had an idea what features and points I must consider while creating my application for mental health.
Survey and Interviews
To understand users I started taking interviews via google forms and phone call. A survey was done in google forms where 36 users gave their responses, and 10 people were interviewed via phone calls. These following questions were asked to the users during interview and survey.
1) How has covid and quarantine days impacted your life?
2) Have you noticed any changes? Stressed? Restlessness?
3) Over the last 4 months, how frequently have you felt so worried about something that you were unable to sleep at night?
4) How many close friends would you say you have?
5) Describe how ‘supported’ you feel by others around you – your friends, family, or otherwise. How you have been feeling about your relationships recently.
6) Have you ever experienced any tragedy that has impacted you significantly?
7) Have you experienced a week or longer of lower-than-usual interest in activities that you usually enjoy? Examples might include work, exercise, or hobbies.
8) How often do you think about your future?
9) Can you tell me about your hopes or dreams for the future?
10) What feelings have you had recently about working toward those goals?
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This survey was completed by 36 group of people with age group of 18 and above . After the survey I realized that mental health and emotional problems issues affect their work and daily life ability by almost 63% of people which was a huge number. Even with the issues they try to deal alone and do not seek any therapist as the number say 77.8% don't talk about their issues with an expect. So going through all they survey I realized many people avoids talking to expect cause they feel uncomfortable talking about it, they feel like they are being judged, so to make them feel comfortable I have to make an app in such a way that where they can openly talk about it without letting their identity out. In such a way they can talk to other share their mental problems and get socialize with people and expects without letting their identity out so they feel comfortable and safe while talking about it.
The research also shows that users need to feel more calm and peaceful and to solve that I can include sleep music or calming music, breathing technique features to calm down their mind and feel more energetic in their day to day life regularly.
Thus after going through all the interview and survey it gave me an initial idea on what users need and wants from my application.
Focus groups
The focus groups were of people aging from 18 and above. This group was mixtures of students , employees , senior citizens.
Define stage
In the Define stage, you will organize the information you have gathered during the Empathize or Define stage. You'll have clear view of problems, goal and the users
Personas
Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Creating personas will help you understand your users' needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.
In this I have taken 4 personas of different age groups and occupations. After going through this I had clear idea about the users goals , pain points and solutions for the problems.
Diana solves her mental problem by reading books where as Tony and Alan solves their mental problems by reading blogs or articles and watching motivational video or use application to distract themself.
I realized that they want to get socialize but due to social anxiety they avoid going out or mix up with people thus resulting them to stress out a lot and causing more damage to their mental and emotional health.
The most common need they all share is they need something or someone to reduce their social anxiety and cheer them up without judging them or stressing them out. This gave me more clear vision on features I must include in my application.
They all try to over come their fear, anxiety and problem but they lack motivation or have no time to relax, a little push and proper expert guidance will help them and that's what my application will provide by helping them get connected with mental experts while going incognito keeping their identity safe which wont trigger their social anxiety and can get comfortable talking about their issues more openly .
Empathy Map
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to
1) create a shared understanding of user needs.
2) Aid in decision making.
3) Users pains and gains.
It gives deeper insight of users by splitting empathy map into 4 quadrants (Says, Thinks, Hear, and Feels)
User journey
This user journey map is focused on the users experience while using this application. I can gain insight into how a customer interacts with my application and what they might find helpful or frustrating.
Following is user journey map of customer who will use my application
Ideation stage
In the Ideation stage, the aim is to generate a large number of ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas which I can then filter and narrow down into the best, most practical, and most innovative ones.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a method design teams use to generate ideas to solve clearly defined design problems. So for the mental health I started writing all type of mental health issues like:
What could cause a mental health issue?
What are the methods to solve it ?
How can self improvement help our mental health?
What are other digital remedies to solve mental health problems? and so on...
Clustering
Clustering is used to organize and analyze large numbers of ideas by categorizing them. By organizing and reorganizing ideas, I gain a better appreciation of mental health.
I divided mental health brainstorming into 4 parts : causes, effects, factors and self treatment. This way it made easier for me to understand the causes and how I can solve the issues of social anxiety and improve their social skills helping them to socialize.
Conclusion
Thus going all through this research I came to a conclusion that mental health can cause serious issues in life and it is something one should not take lightly, with correct professional guidance , exercise, getting socialized and sharing your problems with others will help in improving our mental health.
So for that my application will contain features where one can share their problem to experts or people who face similar issues via chat, or call while staying anonymous so it wont trigger their social anxiety and can be comfortable sharing their problems without fear of them being judged.
Not only that my application will provide features like calming/relaxing music, breathing techniques and motivational videos to cheer their mood up and reduce their stress and anxiety.
And if still there is a user don't feel relaxed they can contact therapists via this application to seek medication help and expert guidance.
In this way my application can help users who are facing mental health issues lack social support due to negligence towards mental health and desire to improve their social engagement.
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