Design Journey
Research
Upon joining the team, There was a trove of great research already done by the design and mental health teams. My time here was spent reviewing reports, meeting with internal teams, and synthesizing the existing intel.
Discovery Workshops
I facilitated multiple rounds of remote workshops with key stakeholders to identify what the core "AHA" factor was for the app. The main ingredient of the entire product was the clinical approach to treating social anxiety which the required mental health team's approval. I worked closely with them to extract and focus on Exposures (putting yourself in socially anxious situations) and to build around that.
Developing A New Social Anxiety Program
After driving alignment with the CEO, Mental Health Team, and Head of Marketing, we were ready to start architecting a new program built around exposures. I facilitated more workshops with the Mental Health Team to develop a system that encourages doing exposures and doing them regularly.
Breaking down "Exposures"
The next part in developing the new program, I worked with our Director of MH to see what we could actually track. Understanding what makes for an effective exposure, I used those elements and designed trackable metrics that users would be prompted to log after completing each one.
- Did they try it?
- Was their anxiety provoked? (it must be uncomfortable)
- Did they use safety behaviors (break eye contact, look at phone, etc.)
- Did their worst fear happen?
- Reflecting on experience
Reviewing Habit Forming Apps
Doing exposures wasn't enough. It had to be consistent and be done for a period of time. What this meant to me was creating an experience that formed habits. After researching a number of different approaches and concepts, the core patterns I recognized was creating an experience that encouraged repetition and provided the satisfaction of completing tasks.
Gamified To Form Habits
Leveraging concepts of habit forming and fitness apps, I designed a repetition system that visually cued users on what needed to be done and where they were in the process. Since each exposure needed to be done at least 3 times, I designed a "ring" where the "reps" for each exposure orbited the exercise. The goal here was to create a design that users can easily absorb at a glance and know what exposure is finished, not started, or in progress. Once all the exposures in a level is complete, new levels are unlocked.
6. Putting It All Together
Once the new Mental Health Program and the core concepts of the app were designed, I directed and oversaw the team's execution of the experience.
Hybrid Wireframing / Rapid Testing
Runway was incredibly tight but the team managed to design the necessary flows which we rapidly tested using User Zoom to make sure no major red flags were present in the user experience.
UI Design
The design team was able to rapidly produce finished UI's because of an existing design system. A number of new artifacts were developed to incorporate the Exposure tracking tool.
Engineering Delivery / QA Testing
I ran regular feasibility meetings as designs were created and prioritized builds to meet sprint milestones.
