Moodlet
Moodlet is a tool to help adolescents (ages 12-18) recognize how daily habits affect mental health. Users will set a goal to improve or maintain their mental health, then track their mood, emotions, and daily habits in order to receive personal insights and suggestions on how to meet their goal.
For a more detailed look at this project, including designing the responsive website, check out the Google Slides Case Study.
Project Overview
The Problem:
Depression and anxiety in adolescents has been on the rise in the last decade. Often, adolescents do not know the signs of decreasing mental health, let alone have the ability to understand their triggers and how their mood is controlled by their daily behaviors.
The Goal:
Design a tool for adolescents to use to track and reflect on their moods and daily behaviors, which will help them learn the patterns between positive and negative mental health, as well as a way to learn how to maintain positive behaviors and improve on negative behaviors
Project Duration:
March 2023 – April 2023
My Role:
UX researcher and designer from conception to delivery
Responsibilities:
- Conducting interviews
- Researching competitors
- Paper and digital wireframes
- Prototyping
- Conducting usability studies
- Iterating on designs
Tools:
- Figma
- Zoom
- Trello
- Miro
- Google Workspace
- Paper/Pencil
Understanding the User
In order to gain a better understanding of the issue, I chose to enlist the help of my contacts currently working in K-12 education and the University of Texas Austin to help develop survey questions to give to my target audience. The questions were compiled into a form and sent to Texas middle and high school teachers to give out during advisory.
After analyzing the responses, I created empathy maps to better understand the users and their needs. Through my research, I discovered two primary user groups:
1. Those who could name their emotions but did not understand why they felt a certain way.
2. Those who understood why they felt a certain emotion, but did not understand how to manage the emotion.
For the first stage of this project, I focused on the needs of User Group 1.
Key Research Findings:
Persona:
Using my research I was able to come up with persona for Esteban, a shy and struggling student who needs to understand why his mood changes so often because he wants to have more positive days than negative days.
While diving into Estebans thought process, I created a journey map and conducted a competitor analysis (see my Detailed Case Study) to help come up with the potential solution below.
Adolescents need an easy to use app and website where they can discreetly track their emotions and learn potential triggers that could be affecting their mental health in positive and negative ways.
Starting the Design
Flow Diagram:
Before sketching anything, I created a flow diagram to map out the user flow.
This helped me define actions users would need to complete and define screens I will need to create wireframes for.
Paper Wireframes:
Since teenagers are the target audience, it made the most sense to design the mobile app first.
I drafted five iterations of each screen on paper, keeping Esteban’s problem statement in mind.
I used stars to note my favorite elements of each to take into the digital wireframe.
Digital Wireframes:
Usability Study:
The digital wireframes were linked together into a low-fidelity prototype.
Five usability studies were conducted through unmoderated interviews where participants recorded themselves following a set of prompts.
For more information, see my Detailed Case Study.
The findings from the usability study were kept front and center while designing the mockups.
Refining the Design
Mockups:
Overall Design Choices:
The color pallet was chosen after researching colors found to promote positive emotions.
- Calming blues are used as the primary colors
- Relaxing green is used for details
- Happy yellow is used for call to actions to promote positive choices
Kiwi Maru was chosen as the font for headings to give the designs a playful but still readable look that is appealing to a younger audience.
Roboto was chosen for the body text due to its ease of reading and versatility between devices and screen sizes.
Usability Study:
The mockups were linked together into a high-fidelity prototype.
The second round of usability studies were conducted through unmoderated interviews where five participants recorded themselves following a set of prompts related to changes made in the mockups.
Observations and notes from the testing can be found in my Detailed Case Study.
Achieving the Goal:
After this second round of testing, I determined the mobile app fulfills the original goal of providing users a way to:
- Track and reflect on their moods and habits
- Discover patterns between mood and habits
- Learn to maintain positive behaviors and improve on negative behaviors
Takeaways
Impact:
Participants in the final usability study were excited to test out the product, and 100% stated they would use Moodlet if it was a fully developed app. 80% of participants said they would use the mobile app over the website.
With continued and consistent use, users would be able to take control of their mental health by maintaining healthy daily habits that would set them up for success in college and adulthood.
What I Learned:
This project taught me how important it was to genuinely listen to what users want and need, especially when discussing something as personal as mental health.
When conducting initial interviews and usability studies, the connections made with the participant were paramount to collecting opinions and truthful information. A great UX researcher should have the communication skills to connect with users in addition to the ability to analyze user feedback to determine the best way to design to reach a goal.
Kristin Lucas – Updated 2023