Uplook
Removing barriers to mental health resources for women of color
UX Design
Mobile
Design-a-thon
My Role
UX Designer/Researcher
Team
Pukhraj Sidhu
UX Designer/Researcher
Timeline
Apr 2021
(2 Weekends)
Hyuk Gi Lee
UX Designer/Researcher
Tools
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Google Jamboard
Miro
Overview
With two other students, I participated in the University of Washington Human-Centered Design & Engineering's annual design-a-thon: HCDE Design-a-thon for Social Good. The topic for 2021 was "Accessing Mental Health Resources" for underrepresented minorities.
We centered our project on women of color as our user group to understand their experiences accessing mental health resources. Out of 7 teams, we placed as 1 of the 2 winning teams.
User Research
We each conducted 1 user interview each with Black and Southeast Asian women. Based on our 3 user interviews, we affinity mapped and synthesized our research, leading to the insights below.
User Research Insights
We discovered that women of color face three main obstacles:
1
Time constraints
Participants expressed how they are very busy with school and work, as well as frustration with how time-consuming the process of finding a therapist and navigating insurance companies is.
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2
Disconnect with therapists
Participants described having a hard time talking to therapists who don't share the same identity. They preferred therapists who understood what they were going through based on shared experiences.
3
Financial barriers
Participants described how they hadn't sought professional mental health help because they couldn't afford it. Navigating insurance companies added to this barrier.
We also observed the following three insights:
1
Giving less precedence to seeking professional help
Participants kept delaying seeking professional help because they were too busy. They predicted feelings of exhaustion would stem from talking about their mental health as they didn’t want to want help for a long time.
2
Relying on friends & family for mental health support
When struggling with their mental health, participants relied on their friends and family. This was one of the main reasons why they put off seeking professional help.
3
Difficulty connecting with and searching for therapists
Participants talked about the challenges of searching for a therapist with the same identity, accessing professional help when therapists were booked, and not being able to find a therapist they can afford.
User Journey Map
Based on our user interviews and research insights, we developed the following user journey map for the persona Milika.
We created a two-fold how might we statement:
Design Question
How might we enable users to identify their need for professional mental health resources so that they feel more emotionally and mentally supported based on:
1
Reducing the barriers of time, disconnect with therapists, and cost, that discourage users from seeking professional help?
2
A decrease in instances where struggles with mental health resurface?
Ideation
Each member of our team individually ideated on possible overarching concepts and sketches. We then critiqued and combined our individual ideations.
Below are a couple of sketches I created during this process:
Lo-Fi Prototype
We then developed the following lo-fi prototype; I worked primarily on the initial survey to understand the mental health resources a user is seeking.
Design Language
We developed and implemented the following visual language components into our hi-fi prototype. Below is also the name and logo I ideated and created to reflect Uplook's mission.
Additionally, we modified PixelTrue minimalistic illustrations collection pack to include graphics within the hi-fi prototype of Uplook.
User Testing
Pukhraj conducted a usability test with one of Uplook's potential users. We received positive feedback on the design's simplicity and intuitiveness, and considerations for our color palette.
Hi-Fi Prototype
After user testing, we then iterated on our hi-fi prototype to the following final product, Uplook.
Design Decisions
To explain the design decisions we made, I've annotated sections of Uplook.
Surveying User Preferences
Time
Uplook asks for users’ insurance to quickly determine insurance coverage by communicating directly with their insurance company.
Cost
Allows users to find resources based on how much they want to pay out of pocket.
Users of low income have an ability to be matched with professionals who offer pro bono and low cost services.
Reflection
This was my very first time participating in a design-a-thon. I learned a lot from this experience - from planning and executing a user research and design project in two weekends to building equity-centered community design principles into our process. I am also grateful to our participants, who were very open in sharing their experiences on a personal topic.
If we had more time, I would have proposed more expansive research, including:
-
Conducting additional user interviews to more fully capture the experiences of women of color regarding mental health resources
-
Hosting participatory design workshops to collaboratively ideate solutions with our women of color users
-
Conducting additional user testing to identify opportunities to fine-tune our design
-
Interviewing and collaborating with mental health professionals to incorporate their experiences into our user flow as secondary users
Other Work
© 2020 by Emma Sadjo.