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Headstrong
Mental Health App
Headstrong is a mental-health app aimed at helping teenagers and young adults manage stress and anxiety during their educational career. Headstrong’s primary target users include high school and college students who are looking for mental health resources and an easy way to better manage their time.
Date :
May to June 2023
Role:
Lead UX Designer, researcher
Challenge
How do we design an app that gives students the space and resources they need to improve their mental health?
Research
Around 30% of students admit to experiencing poor mental health during their studies. Research suggests that one huge component in the decline of teen/young adult mental health is a reluctance to seek professional help and a difficulty in managing time efficiently while on a fast-paced student schedule.
Using preliminary research, I conducted interview questions with students ages 13 to 21. Most participants admitted to struggling with mental health issues caused by or–in tandem with–the stress of school responsibilities. Participants noted a particular struggle with time management and having enough leeway outside of studies to care for their mental health.
Pain Points
Design
Ideation
I began my design with an ideation exercise, brainstorming various layouts to address user needs and desires, while also keeping the concept of a responsive website layout in mind
Digital Wireframes
Choosing the most useful and visually appealing aspects from my paper wireframes, I went on to create digital wireframes that focused on fast and accessible access to mental health exercises.
Prototypes
Low-fidelity prototype
In order to test the wireframes accurately, I created a low-fidelity prototype that connects the user flow of the homepage to various mental health resources and tools
Studies and Testing
In order to test the functionality of my lo-fi prototype, I conducted an unmoderated usability study in which participants were asked to perform a variety of tasks in order to examine the ease of the user flow and determine any pain-points along the way.
Results
Mockups
Responsive Website
After completing the app designs, I moved on to designing the Headstrong responsive website, using a sitemap to establish the hierarchy of the website and the structure of each screen.
The screen size variation includes mobile, tablet and desktop. The designs were altered to accommodate the screen-space on each device.
Mockups
Takeaways
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