WAZO App for Peer Mental Health Support

About this Project

Timeline: Jun - Aug 2019 + Iteration (2020)
My Role: UX Lead (Research & Design)
Team: 1 Product Manager + 3 Designers

Overview

We transformed a in-person peer counseling service onto a mobile app, while focusing on providing effective counseling , timely support and a safe disclosure environment.

My Role

Planning and analyzing user research
Setting design goals
Designing pairing form, mentorship and profile pages
Creating color palette, icons and illustrations

Skip to Final Design

39% of college students struggle with their mental health at some point of their college life.

Stigmatization and limited resources at school counseling services are preventing students from getting the help they need.

Wazo started as a fully in-person service which pairs trained student mentors with mentees for a 6-week peer-counseling program.

As its next steps, Wazo seek to transform the peer-counseling program to an online service in hopes to :

1. Set grounds for potential expansion

2. Improve timeliness of support

Past mentorship feedback forms (50+ responses)

Semi-structured interviews (3 mentor, 3 mentee)

There are huge gaps in expectations between mentors and mentees

Low mentor-mentee pairing efficiency and limited meeting hours resulted in long waits for support

Mentees are concerned about information privacy if they were to use an online platform for mentorship

Aligning expectations for counseling effectiveness

Providing timely & accessible support

Creating a safe environment for disclosure

Each designer primarily focused on 1 design requirements. Mine was on aligning expectations.
I started by thinking:

On what aspects do mentor and mentee expectations not align? Why?

To start with, I revisited the research through another round of affinity mapping focused on mentor and mentee’s direct comments on their relationship

What are the aspects of mismatch?

Personality
Conversation Topic / Goals
Conversation Style (empathetic vs solution-oriented)
Emotional Commitment

Why mismatch?
It can be awkward to discuss some of the expectations face to face, as many of them can feel very personal.

Potential Solution?
Help mentors and mentees communicate expectations asynchronously & gradually

Design Iterations

Solution Part #1 : Add a expectation - oriented section to the pairing form questions

Initial Concept Testing

Helping mentors and mentees be more specific in what they want can help make sure they get matched with someone who meet their expectations. However, the original pairing form only include demographic questions. WIth the guidance from the school counseling unit, I added an expectations & preference section to the pairing form questions, and tested several concepts with potential users to determine how to make the form-filling experience feel quick and fun.

Wireframes with Feedback

The “quiz card” type of pairing form design was selected according to concept feedback. Afterwards, I created wireframes of the pairing form filling flow and tested it with 2 potential mentees and 1 mentor. The annotations on the wireframe show some of the positive and negative user feedback.

Usability Issue 1:

The introduction to the pairing form is too text heavy.

Iteration:

Use bullet list instead of pure text to explain pairing form logistics to reduce visual clutter.

Usability Issue 2:

It could be a lot of effort for users to finish all 15 questions in one go. Additionally, mentees may not know how to answer the expectation questions before knowing the mentorship program a bit more and exploring the app features

Iteration:

Add a buffer page between the Background Info and Expectation section to offer users opportunities to come back later

Pairing form final design

Solution Part #2 : Create channels for tracking & communicating expectations

In addition to helping mentors and mentees find a good match, another way to help align expectations was to promote the exchange of who they are and what they want along the mentorship timeline. To achieve these, I ideated 2 features:

An "Identity" Section

That allows user to show identities that are the most important to them. By doing this, they are letting their mentors/mentees know how to talk to and treat them.

A Mentorship Page

That allows users to:

See how much time is left in the 6-week program
Set and keep track of goals together
Share notes between mentors and mentees

Mentorship Page - Wireframes & Usability Issues

Mentorship Page - Iteration

Change the header structure to distinguish it from the profile page
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Offer opportunity to indicate completion of goals
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Offer opportunity to make notes private
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Identity Section - Wireframes & Usability Issues

Mentorship Page - Iteration

Eliminate the extra click needed to edit general information to simplify the editing flow.
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Final Design

In addition to the Pairing form, Mentorship and Profile pages which I was indivisually responsible for designing, I was involved in the ideation of other features in collaboration with other designers. Down below is a complete overview of features in our final design.

Empathy is always key

Empathizing with the users does not end at the research stage, especially for a product aiming at potentially vulnerable users. A lot of times I need to push back on decisions that seems fun and useful but will complicate things for users and add to their cognitive burdens.

Testing it out with mentors

Mentors used to meet mentees at designated time, but with the App, they can potentially be reached at almost anytime. Will this make mentors feel like too much responsibility is put on them? Long-term usability studies like diary studies could be carried out to answer the question and help further iterate the design.

Providing self-help options for mentees

With the current iteration, the support that mentees get is exclusively from mentors (or mentors in training). To extend support to when the mentors are not readily available, design explorations on self-help features like anxiety relief exercises could be a potential next step.

WAZO App for Peer Mental Health Support

Background

Research

Brainstorming

Design Iterations

Final Design

Reflections