Mental Health App For Teens

They want to expand their services to the teenage demographic to support them in facing their own personal issues anonymously, so they feel open to discuss their personal affairs without judgment from their peers. This is a General Assembly concept project and work on 2 designers. My team connected with five teens in our demographic who shared their thoughts on mental health to further our key research insights.

Research

Looking into Ginger's Competitors the needs, the wants, and the improvements.

I investigated marketing strategies to understand how to retain adolescents’ attention. The key points are made below:

Gamifying incentives to increase application engagement. We aspire for occupied teens to regularly participate in the application, so they can receive badges.
Build an easy and simple navigation application. We require straightforward and easy navigation that is visually appealing to hold the teenager’s attention span.
Ensuring anonymity. We want teenagers to be comfortable and avoid the negative stigma surrounding mental health problems.

Analyzing users' interviews to find Ginger's problem.

Listed are the key insights from seven users: five teens between the ages eleven to eighteen years old, and two mental health professionals:
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"My friends know me better than anyone else in my life."
"Therapists can be really helpful for learning about mental health and strategies."
"It helps me cope with my mental health when I talk to my friends."
"Teens are so supportive of each other—sometimes too much."

Developing a persona from insightful trends through interview analysis!

She is a fifteen-year-old high school freshman who empathized with her peers and family.
She strives to excel in school while being a model daughter.
Problem: She is highly stressed and longs for a better outlet away from her social circle.

Problem Statement

Ginger Roots is a mobile app that provides teens with a private space to talk with peers about their issues, receive support from a mentor and counselor, access resources about mental health, and potentially connect with a licensed therapist.

Solution Statement

Jenny Wilson is a fifteen year old high school freshman who empathized with her peers and family. She strives to excel in school while being a model daughter. Unfortunately, this causes her to be highly stressed and long for a better outlet away from her social circle.

Ideating

Created Jenny's steps going through Ginger's Apps.

With the problem statement in mind, we created a user flow describing how Jenny uses the app. This revealed decisions the user might encounter through a happy and unhappy pathway. Using this methodology revealed decisions the user might encounter and helped us discover potential problems within our final product.

Testing

Testing the Product

Figure 1: Profile Page

On the profile page, the users were perplexed about editing under the profile. They suggested it should have been on the top left. Therefore, the setting could double as the edit button or the little symbol next to the profile icon to indicate edit.

Figure 2: The Chat Rooms

Currently, on the application the Coach and Group chats are separate. I tested and asked the users about the two chats being separated was a good idea. I found that the users were confused about having the group and coach chats in two different icons instead of them being combined.

Figure 3: Navigation Bar

The navigation bar was easy and intuitive for teenagers to get from one page to another.

Prototype

The Final Design

Reflection

Next Steps

I would like to go forth and create a desktop site as a result of our user interviews because some teenagers from our interviews did not have a mobile phone until high school. I also want to improve on the prototype’s animation, such as creating better message bubbles. Lastly, I would continue fleshing out more of the resources and activities screens.

Role

Date