Taking small steps toward public awareness for mental hygiene.
Track,
Aware,
Understand.
⇩
Background
While mental well-being has been increasingly emphasized,
the working class may be too busy to become aware of their own mental status.
Also, many fail to seek help when needed (whether intentionally or unintentionally).
On top of the preexisting difficulties one may be facing, we are often “marketed”
with unnecessary negativity by mass media. This project is created in hopes to utilize
the usage of mobile phones to help raise awareness for one’s own mental health,
as well as to provide help when needed.
What’s expected
The goal is to create something that could keep track of your emotions, mood, and life-style every day. With the information given, this project is expected to generate timely reports in which can be easily understood.
Target Audience
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), young adults, aging from 18 through 25, have the highest rate of depressive disorders, with a reported 13.1%, and have the second highest rate (only .4% less than first place) for anxiety disorders, with a reported 22.3%.
In the United States, the same age group happens to have the highest percentage of smartphone usage per day compared to all other age groups.
Understanding your mental status, where you are at, as well as what could be done is not something that is only valid for those who are already ill. This project hopes to provide awareness, understanding, and help for all young adults.
A survey was taken by 33 individuals who are within the age range of 18 to 25. Within these participants, 15 identified themselves as male and 17 identified themselves as female. All participants agreed to have acknowledged the idea of mental health, though most answered to only have limited awareness on their own mental states.
The Process
A portion of the wireframe, in progress
82% of the individuals that took the survey reported interest in keep updated with their own mental status.
A process often brought up when dealing with mental status is intervention. To find out how important intervention may be, a question in the survey had asked whether it is more likely for “you” to get help if encouraged by others. 32 out of 33 of these individuals agreed that they are more likely to get help when encouraged by others. The score (out of 10) of the likelihood of getting help on their own showed an average of 5.3 while the likelihood of getting help when encouraged by others gave an average of 7.9.
It would be reasonable, then, for this project to aim toward an enforcement for one to form the habit of updating their current mental status in order to understand themselves better, as well as an encouragement for those who may need it.
Challenges
In the survey given, though many were interested with the idea, 48.5% of the individuals reported to be unlikely to check into currently existing mood apps.
In order to thoroughly track one’s mental status as well as what may effect it (or may be effected by it), it is crucial for this application to track some basic health information. How can this project then be differentiated from average health applications that are already built into smartphones?
Solutions
The 48.5% of individuals were invited to a follow-up interview. In the interview, these individuals were asked to give answers to two of my questions:
first, what is something that you would like to see in a mood-tracking app that is not often seen in the preexisting apps?
a majority of the participants were interested in seeing functions relating to common daily activities that cannot be otherwise tracked on your smart devices. Therefore a meal tracking function and a medication tracking function were designed into this project. Though these functions require manual input, once a habit forms, it could be much clearer for one to track their daily intake, in which may help them to see the “why's” in the change of their physical and mental health as well as come up with the “what’s” that could be done.
also, what could be a good reinforcer that could encourage you to check-in to an application on a daily basis?
many agreed that if there were a “collection system” of something interesting, such as plants or animals, it may raise their interest in check-in to this specific application. With this in mind, the project included a coin system, in which the users can collect coins by checking-in to different functions everyday, and with these coins, one may exchange them for the unique animal sticker collection in the gallery.
Aside from the meal and medication trackers, the “Discover” section can also differentiate this project from common health apps. In the “Discover” section, important mental health-related information can be searched, read, displayed, and bookmarked on the page for future reference. Also, users may add an activity timer to this page to aid them through their daily activities. There are also suggested activities that may be displayed alongside bookmarked activities as for effective stress-relief. At the end of the section, the project displays a FAQ section for mental well-being, in means to provide further information on what the users may be interested in.
Prototype Demonstration
App Demonstration Video
Stats Display
Users may choose to display charts of different lengths of time for a broader and clearer view of how their habits (physical and mental) are and how it may have changed.
Panic Button
Panic button integrated into the Discover section is a quick-dial for the US suicide hotline.
Awareness and Future
It is certainly difficult for many young adults to check into an application everyday. This project hopes to aid users to slowly build up the habit, by taking a few minutes of their screen time everyday to view and update their status (mental and physical). We cannot forget how strongly correlated our physical bodies are with our minds. By gaining better self-understanding, it could be much easier to form a healthier mental environment for oneself. Spreading awareness of mental health is not only to stay undiagnosed for mental disorders, but are to help maintain a healthier life in and out.
Credits
Designer: Luna Deng
Researcher: Luna Deng
UI: Luna Deng
Wireframe: Luna Deng
Testing: Luna Deng
Prototype: Luna Deng