UX Design / Prototype
KiwiThrive
Mental Health Management & Care
My Role
UX Research, Information Architecture, User Interaction Design, Prototyping
Kiwi Thrive is a mental health management app on mobile. Choose your preferred daily mental health managing interventions and get ready to start your mental care journey with your lovely kiwi bird friend.
Design Methods
Ideation, Sketching, User Journey, Workflows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Research Methods
Secondary Research, User Research, Competitive Analysis, Usability Testing
PROBLEM
Thinking about opening your mental care apps to start your daily mental management routine: you jump from one app to another because you want to record your mood and do meditation, and you also need to check in to your online counselor on PC.
A few weeks later, this became too much of a mental burden so you started dropping the mood-tracking app, then the meditation, and eventually you stopped your mental care daily routine completely.
That’s basically what happened for users of mental health care apps who were struggling to build a daily habit of mental care. They may want various features from different apps and, as always, it was hard to build a daily routine.
Context
01. PROBLEM SPACE
Nowadays, mental health issue has aroused more attention. Some of us would agree that having psychological consultations or therapy sessions may be helpful for mental health. But there are always many reasons that stop people from doing so.
There needs to be a better solution on how can digital interventions promote mental health and how to increase people’s willingness to stick to the mental care routine.
02. BRIEF
Kiwi Thrive is a mental health management app for people to customize their own mental health care routine, raising mental health awareness.
The platform provides various digital intervention methods and a Kiwi bird incentive system to enhance user stickiness.
03. TARGET
Kiwi Thrive was designed to be a mental health intervention platform that offers a variety of mental care methods to meet people's diverse needs. It also includes a kiwi bird companion to support users on their journey and encourage them to check in daily.
FULL CLICKABLE PROTOTYPE PREVIEW
Before jumping into details, feel free to explore and click through the prototype for KiwiThrive
04. SOLUTION
Main Features
KIWI
The Kiwi bird is your friend during your daily mental care journey. Keep receiving rewards and unlock more items for Kiwi by continuing your daily check-in and completing more digital interventions.
PROGRESS CHECK
Progress checking system to reward you for your login days and keep track of your mental care streak.
Unlock achievement badges by accumulating log-in dates and completing more mental health interventions.
DAILY MENTAL CARE ROUTINE
Edit your daily routine anytime to practice your own mental care picks.
Check in daily to complete your daily routine, get daily reports based on your entries, and collect reward items for Kiwi!
TAILORED REPORT AND EXPLORATION PAGE
A customized daily report that reviews your entries, offers suggestions, shares potential treatment advice, and recommends mini-courses.
The exploration page features mini-courses, short videos, articles, and meditation sessions designed to assist you in delving deeper into your mental well-being.
Research
05. SECONDARY/COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
Secondary and competitive research was conducted to identify the prevailing problem in the mental health management area.
Digital interventions are good for encouraging people to start mental health management compared to in-person treatment but need consistent use.
People have various needs when it comes to mental health interventions, yet have a high rate of dropping off from daily checking.
06. INTERVIEW
Six interview sessions were conducted with participants who had a certain level of mental stress and had knowledge of mental health management apps.
Personalization:
Most apps provide general report and suggestions that do not help users’ specific mental health problems.
Different Needs:
Users have a wide range of preferences in terms of digital interventions, which may not be satisfied by one platform.
Various Features:
Users also wanted a single app that offered a variety of digital interventions, so they wouldn't have to switch between different apps.
User Stickiness:
In addition, users mentioned their past experience with other apps didn’t last very long.
07. GOALS
Tailor Feedback
Design more interactive digital interventions that generate personalized and tailored reports, making users feel confident that the interventions are helping their mental health care.
Variety
Provide a pool of digital intervention methods for users to choose from.
Users build their own daily mental check-in list.
Incentive system
Introduce Kiwi Bird as an incentive system: rewarding users for their log-in and daily mental care routines.
Enable users to effortlessly monitor their progress and celebrate each of their achievements.
Simple Design
Establish a serene and uncomplicated ambiance through a minimalist design style and an intuitive user journey.
08. USER PERSONAS
Sophia, Full Time Designer
Wants community support and talking to others about her mental health care.
William, Collage Student
Wants to explore and take care of mental health management by himself.
Experience
09. ARCHITECTURE
At this point, it’s time to arrange my thousand thoughts and narrow them down to a few features that should be focused on, aligning with user needs and my project goals.
This site map shows the potential contents for each page that serve the user needs found from research and user interviews.
10. USER FLOW
These structures highlight critical user flows for the application, breaking down processes users would use to perform daily mental health check-ins.
SKETCHING & IDEATION
Throughout the initial ideation process, I sketched my layout ideas, mind maps, and various design options.
11. SKETCH
Sketching allows me to have a quick overview of the overall layout and potential page divisions.
Main Page
Daily Tasks and Progress Track
Report
Daily report generated
12. WIREFRAME
Developing detailed wireframes made the navigation and layout easy and straightforward.
Each red routine is represented and the initial incentive kiwi bird system has begun to form.
Wireframe: Home, Report, and Explore
Wireframe: Daily Survey
Wireframe: Journal
Wireframe: Meditation
Interface
13. MOODBOARD
The overall mood of the app should be calm, simple, and warm. This atmosphere should provide users with a sense of ease and comfort so that they can easily and repeatedly use the product on a daily basis to manage their mental health.
14. STYLE GUIDE
I carried these feelings into the style guide, extracting the color palette from mood board that contains a light lime green for the main color, a dark orange as its contrast color, and a series of greyscale of pink-yellow colors.
The basic UI style and font also convey a sense of simplicity and calmness.
Prototype
15. PROTOTYPE
Based on the mood board and style guide, the high-fidelity prototype was developed, reflecing the original problem space, issues spotted from research, and concerns from usability tests.
FULL CLICKABLE PROTOTYPE
Feel free to explore and click through the prototype for KiwiThrive
Clickable Prototype
Check progress ▶
Solving the problems
Check Kiwi Reward ▶
PROGRESS CHECK & INCENTIVE SYSTEM
The Kiwi is your friend during your daily mental care journey.
Two rounds of usability testing revealed users’ interest in a more detailed Kiwi page and a more clear reward system.
The final prototype presents a progress check and a rewarding system: you unlock items for Kiwi with your login progress.
PERSONALIZATION
User interviews and usability tests have shown that different person has different preferences for mental care routines. KiwiThrive provides a variety of digital tools for users to select from for their personalized daily mental health routine.
As an example, the daily routine in the prototype here includes a daily check-in survey, journaling, and meditation.
Clickable Prototype
◀ Check 3 Digital Interventions
TAILORED FEEDBACK
Users exhibited keen interest in reviewing charts and diagrams showcasing their historical data and entries. This engagement underscores the tailored nature of the feedback, aimed at facilitating improved users’ mental health care.
Reports will be automatically generated at the end of each digital intervention.
Upon completion of the whole daily routine, a central 'Report-of-the-Day' page will be displayed on the main page comprising both individualized reports and a synthesized overview for enhanced insight.
Clickable Prototype
Check daily report ▶
AND MORE…
Besides the selected digital interventions for daily routine, users have the option to explore more in their mental care journey.
The exploration page offers mini-coursers, short articles, and additional meditation resources, allowing users to dive deeper when they need.
Clickable Prototype
◀ Check Explore page
Reflection
16. REFLECTING ON THE GOALS
17. NEXT STEP
Tailored Feedback
Each digital intervention provides tailored feedback and reports based on users’ daily entries, offering precise help for users to build better mental care.
Variety & Personalization
Kiwi Thrive offers a more personalized daily mental health check-in platform, providing tailored feedback and encouraging users to build daily mental care habits.
The customized daily routine feature allows users to create their own mental care routine.
Incentive System
During usability testing, the Kiwi Bird incentive system attracted users’ interest and potentially enhanced users’ log-in streak.
Overall Design
Mental well-being is a broad subject, with each individual having their own interpretation and preferences. The continuous improvement of our mental health requires the collective efforts of each person and the support of effective design to maintain a sustainable routine.
Incentive Mechanism:
If I could work on this project more, I would consider improving the incentive mechanism with a more integrated reward system tied to each daily mental care intervention. The aim is to provide more direct positive feedback to reward any progress users make.
Incentive Mechanism:
If I could work on this project more, I would consider improving the incentive mechanism with a more integrated reward system tied to each daily mental care intervention. The aim is to provide more direct positive feedback to reward any progress users make.
Customized Report:
I would also like to develop a more detailed report page since it is the main feedback I want people to receive upon the completion of daily mental check-ins and should be a detailed and positive stimulus.
Online Counseling:
I would also like to add a page linking the app to online counseling platforms like BetterHelp, showing how users can access online counselors easily within the app.