work
Now Space
A Safe Space, anywhere, anytime.
ROLE
UX/UI Designer
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe XD, Illustrator, Photoshop
TIMELINE
6 Weeks | May - June 2023
TEAM
Cludia, Maeve
CONTEXT
Mental health is considered an issue within the Australian community where a vast amount of young teenagers and adults are mostly affected by it due to various factors that contribute to their mental health poorly. Due to this, they develop the lack of action to seek professional help or support which can potentially put them more at risk with their lives.
Designing an application for young Australians to encourage them on seeking professional help based on their own issues with their personal mental health. The app will be used as a platform for users to build up the courage to share their mental health issues and gain support through a comforting user experience.
OPPORTUNITY
RESEARCH
Mental Health Statistics in Australia
Mental health is considered an essential aspect of every individual, which is formed around their sense of emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing. However, mental health can drift into mental health ‘issues’ that alter individuals’ state of mind, emotion and mood in which it can significantly become a major issue on their health. The start of adolescence is a time for growth and change but however it is also the common stage where mental health issues start to develop in young individuals. Throughout the research process, I was able to gather key insights on some major mental health statistics involved around young Australians.
Australians have experienced a mental disorder or illness in their lives.
44% | 8.6 million
17.5% | 3.4 million
Approached on seeking professional health on their mental health issues
Understanding the users
The targeted audience for this project was aimed towards young Australians, particularly high-school and university students. From the research, young males and females currently experience issues with their mental health but do however, avoid the approach on seeking help from professional services and doctors. As this can be due to various personal reasons, it is common that anxiety, time, cost or even judgement are the major contributing factors that affect their decisions on finding professional help. Regarding mental health services, the common idea of stigma and negative attitudes are other obstacles to seeking professional help where most young people fear being described or judged as someone who is ‘mental’ ‘different,’ ‘crazy,’ or even ‘psychotic,’ rather than seeing them as a person who is unwell or a person with a mental disorder (Health Direct) by their family and friends.
Mental health issues are among the leading causes of failing grades, both friendship and relationship problems, substance or drug abuse and more (Youth MHFA ). It is evidently clear that there is a sort of a wide gap between how many Australians have been experienced with a mental illness or disorder with comparison to how many of them decided on the step to seek professional help from it. It is likely that young Australians can lack both the awareness and capacity to seek help on mental services which can be due to their own personal reasons of struggle and restraint within their own mental well-being.
User Personas
To strongly understand the young demographic as the main target audience, I created two user personas of high-school students and using the research I discovered, I implemented them into the personas with their user needs, their goals, motivations as well as frustrations with their own mental health experiences. From both the user persona examples, it is clear that both Emma and Alex strongly have needs for access to resources and support as high-school students as well as having social connections with other people that they feel comfortable to open up towards such as friends and family.
To gain a better understanding on the target audience of young male and female students, I organised interviews with several people who were currently studying and asked questions involved with their mental health state. Before conducting the interviews, I was able to gain permission for this project and I also let them remain anonymous for privacy purposes.
Observation Findings
All 3 people understood the concept of mental health and how it is an essential factor that affects every person. With these people, they explained how their personal mental health was either healthy or not involved with the daily tasks in their lives such as education, work or their social life. 2 out of the 3 people in the interview stated how school/uni in their daily life does at times affect their mental health with the amount of assessments and work associated with mental health problems. However the other person explains how their daily life at home with not currently studying or working has greatly impacted on their mental health which has developed into depression and anxiety issues. From the research, they all stated that they have not or didn’t seek professional help and perceived it was only for people with serious mental health disorders.
Competitive Analysis
DESIGN
Logo Design Process
When ‘The Now Space’ name was official for the app prototype, the next step was sketching out logo design ideas in paper where I implemented visuals that associates with ‘space,’ and also with mental health.
After sketching out the logo designs, it became refined digitally through using Adobe Illustrator where I experimented applying colour and typography styles. For the visual design on the logo sketches, I focused on using blue and green colours to evoke a calming and peaceful tone as a mental health campaign with playful typefaces as the project is towards a younger audience.
Sitemap
The first stage of the app was to create a sitemap, to gain an insight as to what pages to include and the functionality within. An approach on the app was to include strategies as features such as mood journal and articles/stories to engage young people dealing with their mental health. The features in the app prototype aims to ensure that young people are able to use the app anytime for their own personal reasons such as issues with their mental health or trying to maintain peace and balance in their daily lives.
Wireframing
After devising a sitemap, my subsequent task involved designing wireframes, initiating primarily with the layout drafts for the application screens. This project required a second attempt at drafting wireframes as I received constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement. My first wireframe started with a draft for the sign-up page, home page and the explore page. These drafts were intended to serve as a reference to explore its visual design possibilities and to gather insights from my tutor and my peer group.
Refined wireframes
From the feedback, I initially chose to refine the wireframes and complete the process with designing all the pages involved within the app as I was able to get a better insight on how to design the app with the help of one of my team members. We both helped each other in refining the wireframes digitally instead of sketching it out again as my first initial wireframe sketch became our starting point on expanding them.
Draft Review: User-Testing & Feedback
This project was originally an university group project developed from an individual concept project previously beforehand. We were split into groups, where we showed our project concepts and decide which one we wanted to approach on for the final project in which within my group, mine was chosen. So initially, these were the first draft designs from the wireframe sketch which had both positives and areas for improvement where these main screens were the only pages currently designed so far, in order to gain feedback which I first designed by using Adobe XD.
I was able to get feedback back from my tutor and my team in they liked the simplicity of the layout in all the pages, making it accessible for the user but however, I was surprised that my tutor mentioned that the application of the blue colour makes the overall design seem a bit too ‘cold,’ and I should approach on using colours more of saturation and warmth, to evoke more of the calming and peaceful theme for the app such as yellow and orangerather than blue or green.
With the help of one of my team members, we were able to gain a visual understanding on the app and applyvisual elements on each screen. We took inspiration from similar precedents such as HeadSpace and ReachOut and implemented them into features for the app such as direct communication with others focusing on helping with mental health. Another feature, we designed in the wireframe was a refined version of the mood tracker, where the context behind in the wireframe is more understandable on how the user would use the feature. Even though the wireframes are visually improved, there were still potential areas of refinement which we worked on throughout the design process.
Now Space Logo
Before
After
We were also able to change the logo for the Now Space app, from my individual design to a collaborative group logo that the team created together with ideas and designing. The new logo design strongly evokes more on the friendly, youthful and peaceful aesthetic which is suitable for the approach on this app. The tagline has also been improved where the new tagline evokes themes comfort and support towards the users which can be helpful as a strategy to invite and encourage them in using the app to seek help. Overall, the design logo visually suits the demographic of young people strongly comparing to my old logo design which had a innovative design but had the potential to be improved to suit the target audience in which we took the direction on.
PROTOTYPE
Now Space App
Throughout the design process, I was able to develop and learn on how to make the app more improved in both the user interface and user experience from help with another member in my team while gaining feedback from my tutor continuously. A major change for the app was removing ‘the’ from the name of the app which is now just titled ‘Now Space,’ but we still implemented the same typeface that I designed within the first stage of the logo design.
Another major change of direction for the app was the colour scheme in which me and my team experimented with using more saturated tones for the user interface in referral to the feedback from my tutor previously. In comparing to my previous design, we could understand that orange suited the app more visually better than blue because the tone felt more warm and peaceful when exploring around the app. With the help of one my team members rebranding the logo design into more a playful aesthetic, this strengthened the themes of youth and inclusiveness where the other team member was able to help me refine more on the layout of all the screens while they also worked on the group report for our project.
Now Space Social Media
Within the university project, my team were able to create a social media campaign for the Now Space app, a strategy to use a platform to acknowledge towards to young people about seeking help with anything related with their mental health. Myself and my team designed post designs to display as an Instagram feed and afterwards, create mockups to capture the visual aesthetic on how the Now Space will look like as a social media campaign.
One of my team members were also able to use their skills on creating a promotional video for the Now Space app using quirky animations and resourceful information to evoke understanding and purpose towards the target users.
Now Space Promo Video
Signing Up
Users are able to create their own account, submiting their personal details. After signing in Now Space, users can click on their own personal issues that they are currently dealing with in relation to their mental health through a series of questions and options.
After users, submit their answers from the questionnaire, the appuses the information and organises into a personalised dailyschedule for each user included with various features such as peptalks, sleep stories, articles and other daily activites.
Explore
Now Space offers various activities for users to explore based on the idea of mental health included with pep-talks, mini-games, sleep stories, and other routines.
These activities are also organised within a user's personalised daily schedule which won't take too much of their spare time in the day. The app's activities intend to be friendly, fun and calm user experiences for all people during their journey of improving their mental health.
Track Mood
Users are able to track their mood at the end of each day from recording on how they are feeling and the factors that were associated with it. For example, the user demonstrates that they are feeling okay with emotions of being confident, focused but tired as well due to studying commitments.
From using the track feature, users are able to see their mood patterns each day within each month, enabling them to understand more on how their mental health is daily.
NowBot 'Peer Connection'
One of the Now Space app's features offers an A.I chatting companion named NowBot, who provides information towards users' needs on both questions and concerns they might have. For example, NowBot is able to connect a user with another user for support or experience with their mental health, ensuring inclusivity and a safe environment for all users.
NowBot Support
NowBot also portrays as a digital assistant to help answer your personal questions about how users are currently feeling and providing particular strategies and tips depending if their moods require it.
Takeaways
From working in this project, I was able to learn more about the concept of mental health and how it affects many particularly younger people in Australia. Mental health is a crucial aspect in every individual which shapes a part of who people are and it is strongly important, that the mental health and wellbeing of all people is healthy. The opportunity for the project was to create a safe space as a platform for young Australians to express more on their mental health due to the insights I discovered during the research phase of the project. The app prototype improved throughout the design process with feedback to refine the visual design and context with the support of my team members and tutor.
© 2024 by Josh Zhedrick Cay
From working in this project, I was able to learn more about the concept of mental health and how it affects many particularly younger people in Australia. Mental health is a crucial aspect in every individual which shapes a part of who people are and it is strongly important, that the mental health and wellbeing of all people is healthy. The opportunity for the project was to create a safe space as a platform for young Australians to express more on their mental health due to the insights I discovered during the research phase of the project. The app prototype improved throughout the design process with feedback to refine the visual design and context with the support of my team members and tutor.