Overview

Timeline
2 months

Role
UX Designer

Team
Principal Investigator
UX researcher
UX designer

Tools
Adobe XD

Background

Problem
‍The Global Burden of Disease study shows that depression is one of the top causes of health loss worldwide. This study ranks India second with over 40 million depressed people. However, there is a lack of accessibility and awareness of depression due to the stigma of mental health issues.

Solution
‍With the rise of mobile phone use, a few apps help bring awareness to depression and make mental health care more accessible. How can we improve upon the mobile apps that are currently out there?

Research process

As part of the research process, my colleague did a competitive analysis of all the top depression apps in India. Some key questions we had:

Content Relevance: Does the app address the India-specific needs, including stigma, self-diagnosis, awareness and have both audio/video content for users with low literacy levels?
Localization: Is the app content available in local Indian languages and refer to local resources?
Affordability: Is the app free or affordable for low-income users?
Accessibility: Is the app available for offline use?

We found that most apps lacked accessibility and local resources and languages. From this information, we went ahead with the customer user journey.

Researching the current apps gave me insight into how we can improve them. Below is an example of one of the top mental health apps in India:

From the competitive analyses, my colleague came up with the following Customer User Journeys:

Critical User Journey

User End Goal

App Features

The user wants information on the causes and symptoms of depression
The user wants to distinguish the myths about depression from the scientific facts

Gain depression awareness
Gain depression awareness, overcome stigma

Awareness-focused stories customized to the user context; Content in the user-preferred language; Content available in text, audio, and video format
Stigma-focused stories customized to the user context; Content in the user-preferred language; Content available in text, audio, and video format

The user wants to self-manage their depression
The user wants guidance on helping a close friend or family with depression
The user wants to know if they have depression

Tools to track, record, manage symptoms; Peer support from other users coping with depression
Gain depression awareness; Peer support from other depression caregivers
Get screened for depression

The user wants to get information on locally available psychiatrists and therapists

Get screened for depression, seek treatment

Contact info of mental health service providers (matched with the user’s location)

The user wants help in choosing a psychiatrist and therapist from the locally available service providers

Get screened for depression, seek treatment

Contact info of mental health service providers with customer ratings (matched with the user’s location)

Design Process

Using the Customer User Journeys, I created the wireframes that include content relevance, content accessibility, localization, accessibility, and affordability. I started the signup flow to create an account. Then I designed a dashboard that consists of resources to find local therapists, relevant articles and information, questions from the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for self-diagnosis, and a depression forum.

App Wireframes - 1st Draft

I asked peers and the Principal Investigator to review the screens after I finished the first draft. They gave the following feedback:

Title : Instead of stating just ‘Language’ we can say - What is your preferred language for the app?
As most people from lower SES might not have an email account, asking them for phone number would be ideal
There should be an OTP screen. We mainly collect their mobile number and send them one time password (OTP) and ask them to enter that for signup
Remove profession option and add gender option
Instead of average income you can say average monthly income
To make it clearer for the readers that this is a subscreen under “Get Connected” category, you can add a heading - Get Connected over the the title ‘Forum’. Probably reduce the text size of ‘forum’ compared to ‘get connected’
To make it clearer for the readers that this is a subscreen under “Know about Depression” category, you can add a heading - Know about Depression over the two boxes.
Can also include a ‘post a question’ button below all the text on the right side
They should ideally see only a single test as we would be recommending the suitable one based on their age
The choice ratings are not very clear in the test. We can display it in this manner with 0123 scales for each question

Depression Apps in India - UX Case Study

Overview

Background

Research process

Design Process

App Wireframes - 1st Draft

Final Design