mynd
UX/UI Design, Illustration, Wireframing & Prototyping
mynd was designed in order to help young people understand the symptoms, effects and coping strategies of certain mental health disorders, whether that be for their own personal use or understanding for a friend or loved one.
Through working closely with CAMHS and Aware NI, I was able to incorporate the knowledge they gave me and my skills as a designer to produce a high fidelity, award wining prototype. I am so proud of this project & probably always will be!
Project Type & Duration
mynd was designed during my final year studying Interaction Design in Belfast. The project was my major project, to which I chose to specialise in UX/UI design, along with illustration.
My role in the project was, well, everything. Everything from the user research, competitor analysis, sketching, wireframing, prototyping and presenting the project back to my tutors. The project lasted from September, right through to April.
What is mynd?
mynd consists of an iOS application and a physical activity pack aimed at people from the ages of eleven to sixteen years old. mynd was developed in order to help people of this age group to understand the symptoms, effects and coping strategies of certain mental health disorders, whether that be for their own personal use or understanding for a friend or loved one.
The targeted user group are not the only ones who can avail of the positive attributes of mynd, but also their parents and mental health professionals supporting the young persons mental wellbeing. Parents can support and monitor their childs progress through the app, assessing what content their child has viewed along with reviewing their childs daily and weekly feelings. In turn, these recordings can also be shown to mental health professionals, if actively involved, in order to track the progress or, in some cases, the deterioration of a childs mental health.
This product will have a major impact on issues faced by mental health professionals, especially within the NHS, along with developing a greater sense of awareness surrounding the topic of mental health. This, in turn, will hopefully enable younger people to talk more openly about their mental health, as they will now have a greater understanding of the topics and issues that may arise in terms of their mental wellbeing.
What is the purpose?
The idea is that each mental health disorder is represented by an illustrated character, with coping strategies and helplines incorporated within the app. Services online provide extensive content surrounding these disorders already, however, the content is lengthy and may be hard to process for my target audience, initially those aged eleven to sixteen years of age. Taking each disorder and carefully reading the content provided by Aware NI, I created illustrations in order to effectively communicate symptoms and feelings relating to the chosen disorder, making it easier to process and understand.
Alongside the learn section, there is also a ‘Coping’ and a ‘My mynd’ section incorporated into the app. The ‘Coping’ section will enable the young user to become aware of different techniques that may help them with positive mental health and the ‘’My mynd’ section will act as a journal, allowing them to enter logs of how they feel daily, as-well as weekly. Parents can then track this in order to monitor their overall progress or deterioration if needs be and report any negative feedback to mental health professionals. Basically, the idea is to reduce the stigma and educate young people on mental health.
So, Who's The Users?
People who are young, at school and perhaps anyone who doesn't know much about mental health. I felt that the younger group of people would benefit most from the aspect and concept behind mynd. Stress can be built up in the progression of secondary school, such as examination stress and personal problems, and raising awareness surrounding these disorders that may effect them will help them to spot the signs in order to gain relative support if needed or help someone else who may be in need.
Later on through the design process, parents and doctors were included as feedback showed that this user group would need to become aware of problems that arose with young people to protect them. Let's break the stigma!
User Research
The idea is that each mental health disorder is represented by
an illustrated character, with coping strategies and helplines incorporated within the app. Services online provide extensive content surrounding these disorders already, however, the content is lengthy and may be hard to process for my target audience, initially those aged eleven to sixteen years of age. Taking each disorder and carefully reading the content provided by Aware NI, I created illustrations in order to effectively communicate symptoms and feelings relating to the chosen disorder, making it easier to process and understand.
Alongside the learn section, there is also a ‘Coping’ and a ‘My mynd’ section incorporated into the app. The ‘Coping’ section will enable the young user to become aware of different techniques that may help them with positive mental health and the ‘’My mynd’ section will act as a journal, allowing them to enter logs of how they feel daily, as-well as weekly. Parents can then track this in order to monitor their overall progress or deterioration if needs be and report any negative feedback to mental health professionals.
So, Who's The Users?
“I think a major problem with young people from the ages of 11 to 16 is their lack of knowledge and awareness surrounding the topic of Mental Health. More and more people are being diagnosed with these problems, something needs to be done to educate this age group.”
- Imelda McNabb (CAMS Tyrone & Fermanagh)
There is almost a barrier between Teens, their Parents and Mental Health Education. It’s a topic not many want to talk openly about and something needs to change!
User Research
For my User Research, I designed 3 sets of questionnaires specifically for 3 different groups of people. I gave 30 questionnaires to people between the ages of 11-16, 10 questionnaires to Parents of Children of this age and 5 questionnaires to Therapists or Mental Health Professionals. These are some of the results:
User Personas
These helped me to understand the different users' needs, experiences, behaviours and goals. Creating personas helped me step out of myself and think outside the box. It aided me to recognise that different people have different needs and expectations, and helped to identify with the user I was designing for.
Sketching
I love drawing and I love putting my ideas on paper. I think this is the most important part and allows me to explore different ideas and concepts from the very beginning. I also sketched my character designs at this stage after using dribbble and tumblr for inspiration!
Site Map
I knew the pages that would be in the design now after sketching, so I decided to create a sitemap so that I knew the user flow and could relate to this throughout the design process.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
I took the sketches and used sketch to create low fidelity wireframes. After discussing these with my tutor I was able to tweak a few things and find issues that would arise before I began the final design.
High Fidelity Wireframes
I then took all the inspiration, colour palette and sketches and began to design the project in high fidelity. This took a while as I kept changing some aspects to make sure the colours were not over whelming and that it was a crisp and clean design.
IDI Graduate Design Awards
I was selected as the winner for the best UX/UI graduate design submission throughout the whole of Ireland. After being shortlisted against 6 different students within this category, my project mynd was selected as the winner. I am extremely proud of this!