The following case study shows the ideation and development of a prototype for a self-help app which is supposed to enable users to create and schedule useful habits, so that over time they can improve their daily routine, mental health and achieve work-life balance.
Although the information that I discovered through research revolves around a lot of extreme manifestations of mental illnesses, the focus of the app is not primarily aimed at mentally ill patients in need of therapy, but at regular consumers who struggle with common daily issues that mainly result from mental attitudes and patterns of thinking - those patterns being neither pathological nor overly extreme in nature.
Thus, the app is not supposed to replace therapy or the actual help of a specialist. Instead, the concept is to provide a helpful digital tool for the smartphone user to gain clarity about his or her goals and what actions they need to take in order to make their vision come true and change their lives in small and well-defined steps.
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I had this idea based on friends, colleagues, users on social media, and some personal experience that mental health might be a fundamental topic more people grapple with than we might initially expect. If that’s true, this would make sense to me based on anecdotal evidence. However, from this project idea the question arose: Was there any data to back this up? And would that data prove or disprove my presumption?
I limited my initial research to the US only. After identifying some key data in scientific articles the following picture emerged:
There’s been a speedy increase in mental health issues among the teens and Gen Z starting since the period between 2012 and 2015. The general trends are terrifying and include increases in depression and anxiety especially among young people. Older adults and millennials are largely spared the worst effects of this unhealthy rise of mental health crisis.
The following sources were a mine of crucial information regarding the decline of wellbeing among the young people in recent years.
Adolescent mood disorders since 2010: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6WbDdgnzFHDHPx9HXzR5o
The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Began Around 2012: https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-the-teen-mental-illness-epidemic
Here’s a selection of diagrams clearly representing the rise of mental health problems in the US within the last decade.
The data is saddening and alarming. It clearly shows that emotional-mental issues have been on the rise in recent years and that there is a huge demand for help and genuine information to tackle those problems in the present and near future.
My next thought was to examine whether there were differences between ages and sexes. Although both boys and girls are impacted by this negative development, it’s indeed the young girls in particular who manifest a meteoric rise of mental issues within the last few years.
I quickly realized that such a division of data by sex wasn’t really relevant to my app, as the ultimate goal was to enable users to create their own self-development program for and by themselves. Another set of demographic data wouldn’t contribute anything new to the functionalities of the app. That’s why I decided to focus straight on the actual range of problems young people might actually struggle with at various stages in their lives. Could I recognize any patterns?
Based on the insights from the research I started seeing patterns and realized that the following problems come up continuously in young people’s lives:
depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self harm, peer pressure, stress & burnouts, time management, worries about material sustenance (debts, housing), existential uncertainty, and loneliness - to name a few.
Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/c3ab9e30-2f57-4d0e-89a5-a37c2c721388
I also wanted to complement these insights with other apps on the market which are similar to what I was trying to build. Especially mediation apps caught my attention as they are usually used by people who want to train their minds due to preceding mental problems they had to cope with. I wanted to see if the type of meditations and issues those apps list in their pre-defined data sets match with my findings. I reviewed the following apps: Headspace and nilo.health.
Here’re some of the popular topics on nilo.health: anxiety, habits, productivity, stress reduction, emotions, work-life balance, self-confidence, mindfulness, etc.
Here’s some of the popular topics on Headspace: relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, anxiety, sleep issues, self-esteem, phone addiction, motherhood, etc.
To sum it up: all those topics cover a mix of needs in the areas of self-development, professional soft skills and relationships. Especially the need for developing emotional intelligence and dealing with anxiety seem to be widely spread among users.
I decided that all these identified topics and problems could be used as predefined data sets that could easily be picked up by most users during the custom setup of the app. Of course there is an unlimited number of problems people might face in their lives and an app has only limited capacities. That’s why I also planned for a text entry field for manual typing in case a user decides that none of the predefined options accurately describes his or her problem.
It became pretty clear to me that there are more than enough problems young people cope with that could be treated through self-taught techniques in an app. The only question remained whether there was a strong demand for such self-help products. Even a very superficial glance at numbers gave a clear answer: YES!
Here’s the data about the number of self-help books purchased in the recent decade:
"The self-help industry has exploded in recent years by 11% from 2013 to 2019, with U.S. sales of self-help books growing annually up to 18.6 million volumes. [...] This industry was worth $10.5 billion as of 2020, [and] the self-improvement market is expected to rise to $14.0 billion by 2025. [...]"
"With an estimated 15,000 self-help books published in the United States each year, the self-help genre continues to grow. [...] In 2021 sales jumped 19.3%, and unit sales were also up by nearly 25% compared to 2020. For the first time in history, sales hit 17.1 million in the first week of January."
Self-help Books Statistics: https://wordsrated.com/self-help-books-statistics/
Self-Improvement Market Recovers from the Pandemic, Worth $13.4 Billion in the U.S.: https://blog.marketresearch.com/self-improvement-market-recovers-from-the-pandemic-worth-13.4-billion-in-the-u.s
Here’s some data and forecast about mobile meditation apps:
"In 2022, the global market for meditation and mental wellness apps was estimated to have reached over 533 million U.S. dollars. By 2028, meditation apps are projected to surpass 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in revenues from worldwide users."
"In 2022, the average revenue per user (ARPU) of meditation apps was over 46 U.S. dollars, but the global average spending per user is expected to increase to 60 U.S. dollars by the end of 2027."
Meditation and mental wellness apps - Statistics & Facts: https://www.statista.com/topics/11045/meditation-and-mental-wellness-apps/#topicOverview
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"53% of US senior citizens meditate at least once a week. [...] The number of children getting into meditation is also increasing. The ratio has surged by 800 times since 2012. This may be basically due to an uncertainty and instability of their future, and round-the-clock stressful schedule.”
"Women are meditating regularly, in comparison to men. 16% of females perform meditation. Whereas, only 12% of males are doing so."
"Users are focusing on various other features while deciding which meditation app to choose. This includes an option to keep track of their progress, experiment with different practices, enjoy audio and video playback, and more."
Top Meditation App Statistics to Know: https://appinventiv.com/blog/latest-meditation-app-statistics/
That’s all I needed to know to become fully convinced of the real high demand for self-help, personal growth, and emotional competence skills especially among a broad spectrum of ages.
There exists a high demand for self-help books and learning among all age groups , with teenagers and young adults being especially impacted by the rise of mental health issues in recent years.
The overall interests among audiences cover a variety of topics in the areas of self-development, financial competence and spiritual matters. Although the main focus of mental crisis was identified especially with young teenage girls, the benefit of a personalized self-help app would have a huge impact on a variety of boys, girls and adults, regardless of sex, age and other demographic data. It was the customizability of the experience which was conceptualized as the main strength of the app.
After the review of data I still felt confirmed in my initial presumption about the need for a customizable self-help app.
Based on the preceding research, what would be the main findings with regards to the users’ need for mental health? The first key point is guidance. People cope with their problems, because they don’t know why they got there in the first place and how to find the right solution which is sustainable to their case. The LifeForge app would provide the necessary guidance to its users, conveying some key psychological concepts that would put the users’ plans and actions into an insightful perspective.
The concept of self-help is exactly that: you help yourself. LifeForge didn’t intend to cover pathological cases. The whole concept revolved only around regular people with a normally healthy mind who at any time might find themselves in a precarious situation or phase of their life which they might not be able to cope with on their own. That’s where LifeForge would come into play.
The plan is to make it clear to the user that they can change themselves and their situation if they only take the necessary time and effort to achieve their goals. It gives people the realization that they can change if they really want to. And this app is only a useful tool to streamline the process of change for them.
The app itself needs to be utterly simple. Human mind thinks in chunks. And people start losing their focus if things get too complicated. Also, it’s about making the process fun and straightforward. The goal of the interface is not to distract from finding the actual solution . Everything should be intuitive and easy to find. We talk here about Gen-Z and Millennials who would mainly use the app. They know how to operate in the digital world and if they can’t orient themselves in the setup and navigation of the app straightaway, then that would be a design issue. Therefore, the main goal was simplicity and practicability.
As the app was meant to give the user a high degree of freedom in deciding how they want to help themselves, it is necessary for them to go through an initial setup stage to get to know the app while already creating the first steps toward solving their problems.
Following the principle of simplicity I wanted to make sure that this setup is minimalistic and only showy elements that are required at the moment. The setup serves to create a personalized dashboard that can be fully accessed once the initial setup is complete. In this way the user gets familiar with the app, goes through a process that already tackles their problem and also provides first important insights about the workings of the human mind.
In my opinion that would be a compelling, positive and even fun first experience to any new users. Instead of being confronted with a predefined dashboard with lots of nested functions, the user gets the impression that they create the app’s content in just a few minutes through a simple, linear process. Once the process is complete, the user can navigate from the home page or main dashboard, already understanding its basic functions and screens.
Giving the user freedom is good, but freedom also needs to be learnt. Otherwise, it might become overwhelming to the inexperienced user who doesn't know what they’re looking for specifically. That’s why in the setup stage I left room for a speedy crash course on basic psychological concepts.
Ignorance is bliss… but knowledge is power. Users looking for self-help need to understand how the human brain and mind works in simple terms, so that they understand why they need to define their goals, create actions, and stick to a consistent schedule while trying to change their life. The crash course would give them the necessary context for their self-development program that they create inside LifeForge.
Given that the seeking user needs guidance while creating their own self-help programme, their smartphone would become a kind of a coach and their digital friend that helps them find the right way. It would feel like a handy pocket solution to their mental health problem that is always within reach, as opposed to a real therapist or a life coach.
That’s why it’s crucial that the app would get access to the phone’s notifications, so that the scheduling function can work properly and send reminders at the right time. Only in this way would the app unfold its full potential as an active force for the users’ daily routine.
Also, I wanted to make sure that the person in need doesn’t become addicted to the process itself. The goal is to solve a mental health problem, not to make the person dependent on the app in perpetuity. Through the scheduling and notification function the app could remind the user when to take breaks, go offline, or even switch off the phone to rest in the real world.
The low-fi wireframes helped me visualize the basic layout and structure of the app, especially the initial setup. In this way I could roughly see the scope and complexity of the entire process. It was important for me to keep the user journey simple and straightforward. Despite the serious topic the experience itself should be fun and enjoyable - after all, the user is working on their new life, and that should give them a pleasant feeling of progress.
However, I quickly realized that one overarching structure was missing from my concept, namely the user flow. I disregarded it for the time being and intended to move it to a later stage - a mistake. While prototyping I wondered how many screens I would need in the end. Also, the branching in the flow based on the user’s decisions could only be badly derived by just looking at the low-fi prototype. That’s where it hit me: one step back will be one step forward - back to the user flow!
The sketching of the user journey for the setup stage was crucial for the completion of the low-fi and the subsequent high-fi prototype. Especially in places where the user wants to define their problem manually or to add more goals or actions the flow of the screens branches out. I realized it was necessary to visualize how that branching and looping would integrate back into the main flow. By defining all steps and simple interactions and by shifting the shapes around until it all fitted neatly together I gained a better and more concrete understanding of my entire app concept. Now, I could take the prototyping to the next level.
Not everything can be predicted in the preparation phase. Especially new details pop up in your mind as you refine your prototype. This was also in my case.
While working on the UI elements for the scheduling functionality I realized that I forgot one main component. People could choose their goals for scheduling. However, every goal could also have multiple actions. And it was actually those actions that needed scheduling, not the overarching goals. Thus, I confused actions with goals.
Although it was easy to correct the relevant component, I realized it’s little details in particular that often you can only notice at a late stage of your prototyping process.
Furthermore, you make your life as a designer so much easier if you set up your UI elements correctly and effectively in Figma. In this way you can update a parent component once and all the derived instances will self-correct automatically. In fact, given the huge amount of screens a prototype might often include, smart file and component management is absolutely crucial.
It’s crucial to get feedback from test users, even if that feedback might not be quite representative. Especially at an early stage any type of feedback is highly valuable.
I sent the existing prototype to a bunch of people in a Whatsapp group with the request to go through the setup process and provide some feedback about their subjective experience by filling in a questionnaire form that I prepared beforehand. I received data and comments from 4 test persons.
All of the respondents found the prototype to be clear and relatable and the concept of the app to be definitely useful. They also found the linear setup process to be appropriate for this specific purpose.
The design was rated as OK, though one person found it rather poor than good due to the large chunks of explanatory texts, and the blue background color and the logo appearing too medical. Another subject found the color scheme to be too old school. It was a clear indication for me to reduce the amount of text, update the logo, and introduce a new color scheme that would move away from the coldness of the blue and convey more associations of joy and emotional warmth.
A major recommendation from the UX standpoint was to include a constantly present progress bar to improve better user orientation in the setup process while filling in the details.
Someone thought the underlined words such as “thoughts” and “feelings” to be links to other pages, so they kept trying to click on them. This was an indication for me to use the emphasis in other ways, e.g. with bold font or a different color.
Another suggestion was about possible integrations with other content or already established self-improvement platforms, e.g. Habitshare. These were all great ideas to consider for the later stage of app development. An alternative idea was to have links to interesting TED-talks about the self-development topics to inform the goal-making process. Integrating authoritative Youtube videos would provide the user with more relevant content that explains the topics from various complementing perspectives.
There is so much that could be done with this concept for future applications. However, the app doesn’t need to invent the wheel anew. There are already quite a number of productivity and meditation apps on the market. The key aspect that differentiates LifeForge from others is the fact that it could be used as a type of a top-level container which incorporates parts of other established apps that solve certain problems even more effectively.
Let’s take an example of a meditation app: if a user decides that their way to improve is to meditate daily on certain topics, LifeForge wouldn’t need to provide its own set of meditation techniques. Instead, it could tap into a pool of existing meditations from other successful apps via API. In this way LifeFore could become a master app that bundles everything that the self-help niche could offer to a user in need. Through licensing agreements between companies such business partnerships could be established and all parties involved would benefit from this type of a technical integration.
This project was a great learning curve about how to best setup and arrange files in Figma. File management is important, especially because UI design is a collaborative process in a corporate environment which should also make room for constant updates. That’s why it’s smart to put some thought into how to structure the elements inside the Figma files for the other stakeholders.
As an intuitive designer I like to make decisions on the go while getting to action fast. However, the power of preparation shouldn’t be underestimated. The proper setup of UI elements before the actual prototyping is a good strategy that pays off later in the process. That’s what I’m going to pursue in my subsequent projects.
Furthermore, I gained more clarity about the connections between goals and actions when it came to scheduling them. My initial thought was too simplistic with regards to the necessary UI elements. Only during hi-fi prototyping I noticed the missing components. You can always go deeper into detail even during low-fi prototyping which can save you a good chunk of time at a later stage.
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