Designing for Batyr,
a Mental Health Social App

MY ROLE

Product Designer

MY RESPONSIBILITY

TOOLS

Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Google Slides

PROJECT OVERVIEW

“Co-creating Stories For Mental Health” is an exciting group project for Designathon 2021, a competition held by Sydney University Experience Designers (SUEDE). The design brief features Batyr, an organization that focuses on the mental health of young people. The competition lasted for a total of three days, including the final round. We were tasked to redesign OurHerd, an app that uses the power of storytelling to help young people overcome their mental illnesses.

Our team’s design was chosen as one of the five finalist to present their design concepts to Atlassian judges.

Problem Statement

How might Batyr create a more seamless and interactive experience that will support young people with co-creation of their stories?

Problem Reframent

Before we begin our research, we decided to break down the core issue by reframing the problem. This problem reframing helped us take a step back and look at what might actually be the real issue in the user journey. We asked ourselves, do people even want to tell stories? Do they even know that telling stories can improve their mental health? By pondering upon these questions, we thought of what might be hindering young people from co-creating stories.

Our problem reframent: How can we design a more engaging experience that creates rapport in a safe and connected space for young people who have a shared adversity?

Research

We then conducted our research on our target audience which is young people (aged 18-30) experiencing adversity that impacts their mental health. The target market research was done to identify their needs in order to create that seamless and interactive experience. The research suggests that people have the need to connect with real people to share their problems with. We also believe that the users need a stronger understanding and awareness of the benefits of co-creating stories. When it comes to storytelling their adversity, it can be hard to open up to anyone. But being able to tell stories anonymously will ease them to open up and be more honest.

Key Identified Issues

Core Ideas

To create a more seamless and interactive experience, the three main focus of the redesigned app are building connections, finding incentives, and being authentic. People should develop relationships – as it’s hard to find people who truly have experienced what they are dealing with. They’re not letting these adversities consume them as they’re able to vent. Which helps find an incentive to stay with the app. Most importantly, as they share their stories, they are able to create their own narrative – making it authentic. When these 3 core ideas intertwine is essentially what our solution centers around—wanting to help a community through relationships and its communication of insights.

Our Vision

Our vision: Building real lasting relationships with people who share common experiences by communicating with them and sharing their story.

Our Solution

For our solution, we chose to implement three new features that is vital to make the app experience seamless and interactive.

Here is the link to view our prototype/app mockup

Personalised Profile Pages

Firstly, we included a profile page that users are able to view and interact with. To make them feel safe in sharing stories, we made sure that they can choose to hide their identity through avatars and pseudonyms. Social media profile is a vital part of any social media platform. They help users to be more discoverable, build relationships with their connections or followers, as well as craft their personal brand.

Dumps

One of the features in the profile page that stand out the most to our judges was the “Dumps” feature. It is a place where users can vent their emotions and feelings through videos and blogs that are posted on a limited time frame. Going back to our user needs, we considered that users should feel relieved when telling their stories. So for negative emotional feelings, we created a section called “Dumps” where users can just dump their feelings. Content in the Dump will be deleted after a week, and it can be set to private. This feature was highly praised by our judges because it understands our users the most. People like to vent and let all their emotions and feelings out.

Comments and Hugs

As we decided to add a comment section, contradictory to the original app where the comment section is removed, we were asked by the judges of our strong rationale. We added the comment feature to encourage users to share insights and comforting messages. The comment section is regulated so that toxic or negative comments are deleted. This also comes from our own experiences using social media apps. While sometimes toxic comments exist, reading the good and more often the funny ones is what makes it very entertaining and encouraging. Without these positive reinforcement from others, there is no reason to stay with the app as there are no humane interactivity.

Virtual Party

So why a virtual hangout? Beyond direct messages (DMs) & comments, real time chats and calls help in developing deeper relationships. By having hangouts, we evoke an aspect of fun & creativity despite the adversity they are facing.This can be felt through discovery when users explore buildings through their avatars and with their friends. It also gives them time to have a break from reality.

Conclusion and Reflection

To create a seamless and interactive experience within OurHerd app, users need to feel valued and heard. This will make it easier for them to open up and share their story. We need to allow people-to-people communication in a safe and regulated manner within OurHerd app.

Through the presentation we got feedback from our judges that made us realise there were some things that we did well and some that could have been done better. The judges were particularly impressed with our “Dump” feature where users can vent their emotions as much as they want in the app and have it only be viewed by certain people that they trust. It is a feature inspired by the instagram “close-friends-only stories” where the things people share can only be viewed by a selected group of their followers.

The judges wished that we could have emphasised this feature more and promoted it as the main focus of the proposal instead of focusing on so many new features. This became a huge lesson for us and made us reflect on our approach in delivering a good proposal. We also didn’t include our design process in the presentation which made the design proposal look unpolished. We realized that including a design process in every project is crucial to let people know our thought process from start to finish.

This project is accredited to my amazing team “The Alchemist” which consists of myself, Valencia Yun and Nicole Moran. We were in the same group for our studio class and was excited to be in one group again for this competition. It was truly a pleasure working with them.

Let's Work Together!

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any inquires! I'm best reached through Linked In or email.

Designing for Batyr,a Mental Health Social App