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Define



The Problem


    Finding a mental health professional can be an additional stress on the person seeking help. There’s an opportunity to make the process quicker and easier, improving access to existing mental health services.



The Goal


    To help connect people with mental health professionals for in-person sessions in an intuitive and transparent way.


The Solution


    Theris: A tool that lets users search, apply a variety of helpful filters, and book an in-person consultation with a qualified mental health professional.









My Role & Responsiblities



   UX Designer, Researcher, and Visual Designer.

   I worked on the Concept, User Research, Wireframing, Visual Design, Prototyping & Presentation.








User Research





    Interviews and surveys were conducted with both mental health professionals and clients, as well as a competitive audit of digital services operating in the mental health space.


    It was surprising to discover the difficulty people experienced trying to find available help, even when using their insurance provider’s lists and other existing tools.


   An additional insight was the challenge providers themselves can face attracting and vetting clients. This revealed the opportunity to approach the design as a connector between clients and providers.









Pain Points




   
︎  Searching for a therapist can be a dense and at times opaque process—especially for first timers.



︎    There are often questions about the different types of treatments, licenses, and provider specialties.



︎  There are many considerations both objective and subjective that factor into a provider match.




︎  The potential client’s research, cold calling, and phone / email tag is time intensive and can create additional anxiety.



︎  Mental health providers may be distracted fromtheir core mission when sharing and promoting their services to grow a practice.








Persona: Bryn






Name: Bryn
Age: 33
Education: B.A. Marketing
Occupation: FMCP Marketer
Hometown: Reykjavik
Family: LTR, lives w/ partner
“I admitted to myself that I need some help, but finding a therapist should be so much easier...”


Goals


  • To find the right therapist, without creating additional anxiety in the process.

Frustrations


  • “No clue who has availability, takes my insurance, or helps people like me.”

  • Searching, sending emails, making calls and waiting for reply is mentally taxing.


    Bryn used her health insurance portal to find a provider that accepted her insurance, then sent several emails and made phone calls. She’s frustrated by having to make contact with so many people who never responded or didn’t have availability that matched hers. Even then, the few that did have availability didn’t really feel like the best match.



User Journey: Bryn








Ideation



Paper wireframes


Iterations on paper began to outline the six main parts of the user flow.


   
 


Goals:


  • Conversational

  • Comfortable

  • Secure


    A conversational tone of comfort and security as people move through a process often percieved as intimidating.








Digital Wireframes





    Search is a core feature, here we assist the user by presenting a series of conversational prompts that help to filter results to a specialist that meets their needs.





Users not wishing to answer personal questions have the option of browsing all potential matches, using a filter bar to narrow their search.






  Once selected from a list of potential matches the journey moves to a card with more detailed information, a welcome message from the therapist, and a call to action.





    The research revealed that both clients and practitioners liked the idea of being able to access / share content helpful to prepare for sessions.









Low Fidelity Prototype












Usability Study Findings


  Two rounds of usability studies were conducted with our lo-fi prototype and V1.0, with participants from both the client and provider pools.



Round 1 Findings



  • The navigation buttons and conversational prompts needed to be more differentiated.

  • All core functions needed to be accessible from all pages.

  • The Lorem Ipsum content was confusing to some of the testers.

  • Some users requested a dark mode in order to better view the screens in various settings / times of day.


Round 2 Findings



  • The Messaging feature wasn’t popular with the providers we tested with, especially before a booking.

  • The “conversational nav prompts” cluttered the experience.

  • Some of the verbiage we used didn’t strike the desired tone with testers.



Prioritizing Insights












Refining The Design



    After the usability studies we worked to reduce clutter in the design, differentiate the action areas, review verbiage, and design a dark mode for accessability.



We also eliminated the pre-booking message exchange feature from the therapist card screen, and combined screens throughout the flow to streamline the experience.









Screens











High Fidelity Prototype

















Acessibility Considerations



    Accessiblity must be an important consideration in any user experience design. Theris intends to expand access to mental health services, the clients of which can come from all walks of life, making accessability a defining aspect of this particular project. 


    Theris text is assessed for legibility by those with vision impairments using W3 AAA guidelines, and actionable elements tagged for focus order for those operating switch devices.

    In addition, a dark mode gives people the option to switch between a light and dark UI as their personal situation or disability dictates.









Takeaways




  •     The value of engaging stakeholders from multiple sides of the problem, as early as possible, can have immense consequence. In this case, connecting with individuals that have been through the process of seeking mental health assistance—as well as with those providing it—allowed us to see the problem more fully and adjust the approach towards designing a possible solution.


  •     Being sensitive to different types of customers and their sentiments can help steer a project away from being designed only from a single perspective. This can be particularly important for those transactions that can be personally sensitive or uncomfortable to people. Here, the copy is extremely important and were this project going to ship we would involve mental health professionals to help shape the content. 

  •     The competitive audit on this project revealed that even with the staggering amount of players in this particular sector there are still often gaps in what types of services are being offered and what opportunities still exist to meet them in a unique way, which allowed an approach that doesen’t quite yet exist in the market.











Next Steps



  •     To further build out the project working with mental health professionals to develop the pre-screening questionnaire and how it can act as a filter system.


  •     Designing the provider side UI, adding an Insurance card scanner and furthering the app’s accessibility.







Thanks for taking a look at the Theris project. Please say hello, comments and feedback welcome!