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EMAIL  akeeksha@uw.edu
PHONE  +1-425-866-4577
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Caring on the go

Service design  |  Grad project

A streamlined mobile counseling service to make mental health resources easily accessible for caregivers, ensuring long-term support for their children.

This project was the result of the HCDE "User-Centered Design" course, which emphasized designing responsible innovations. I collaborated with 3 classmates to tackle the challenge of making mental health support more accessible for children.

The impact:

91%

participants believed the service fills a significant gap in the current mental health support landscape.

57%

users felt the mobile clinic design was conducive to private, effective counseling sessions.

100%

users comprehended the core objectives of the service after it was explained.
jump to solution

Collaborators (4)

Ak (me): Design lead
Johnny: Researcher
Swati: Researcher
Zelia: Designer + PM

Duration

Sep - Dec 2022

My contributions

Research (SME interviews, persona)
UX design (storyboard, wireframing, service blueprint)
Visual design
Prototyping (lo-fi, hi-fi)
Interior design

Tools

Qualtrics
Figma + Figjam
Notion
SketchUp Pro
Final Cut Pro

Defining the problem statement

Finding mental health care for children can feel like a complex game of hide-and-seek.

The problem statement:

We aimed to make mental health support more accessible and convenient for families with school-aged children, recognizing that access to these services can be a challenge for many families.

How can we make it easier for caregivers to access mental well-being resources for children in elementary and middle school?

Existing user journey:

To gain deeper insight into the challenges caregivers face while seeking support for their children, I developed a storyboard to vividly illustrate the current user journey.
Penn, a vigilant parent, notices increasing signs of stress in their child's behavior.
Seeking guidance online, Penn is overwhelmed by the multitude of unverified mental health resources.
Penn feels isolated while struggling to determine the best source of assistance.
They finally schedules an appointment, only to be disheartened by a three-month waiting period.
At the appointment, the counselor admits their expertise doesn't align with the specific needs of Penn's child.
Penn finds themselves back at square one, still searching for reliable support.

Research and insights

Navigating the terrain to build understanding

Checking our biases:

Drawing from our own experiences and understanding, we hypothesized that caregivers might lack comprehensive awareness about children's mental health. To delve deeper into this and to (in)validate our initial assumption,, we talked to caregivers, SME counselors, and young adults.

Surveys

77 responses (54 parents, 23 young adults) to gain an understanding of the problem space

SME Interviews

3 interviews with school counselors and therapists to to identify gaps between families seeking help and available facilities

Interviews

5 interviews conducted (3 parents, 2 young adults) to validate findings
As a team, we analyzed the data collected from the interviews and surveys using an affinity map to extract insights and generate solutions.
Affinity map of insights generated by considering perspectives of all stakeholders

Our findings:

The user research disproved our initial design question and revealed that caregivers are already well-informed about mental health and actively identify symptoms in children. In addition to this, we generated the following insights that were used to drive the ideation phase.

High demand

Help tackle the demand for students’ mental health services

Awareness

Equip parents with knowledge about mental health

Access

Connect families with mental health resources

Long-term care

Maximize extension of (long-term) mental health support to students in need

Community

Create a community that values mental health
Initial design question:

How can we increase awareness about children’s mental health among caregivers?

Final design question:

How can we make it easier for caregivers to access mental well-being resources for children?

Ideation and brainstorming

Steering the design

Personas

Based on our findings and observations from the research methods, we developed three personas that represented our three key stakeholders of parents, children and specialist.

Scoping down and validating ideas:

From our research, we generated three different design concepts to address the problem. We evaluated them using SWOT analysis to determine their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and chose the concept with the greatest potential.

The concepts included a digital resource library, personal assistant, and mobile therapy clinic. We carefully evaluated the pros and cons of each and conducted 6 peer review sessions to gather feedback. Based on the review and our evaluation, the solution that we decided to develop further develop was the mobile therapy clinic, accompanied with a web platform of mental well-being resources.
Concept 1: Digital repository of mental well-being resources
Concept 2: Personal mental well-being assistant bot
Concept 3: Mobile therapeutic clinic - the chosen direction

User flows

To comprehend the interactions and steps that users would go through when using our service, from the beginning to the final interaction, we created UX flows that encompass all the touchpoints as experienced by the personas.
The high-level idea of the service flow:
Service builds a website of digital resources and to onboard schools and therapists > Service recruits a group of therapist > Collaborates with the School > School onboards families > Service visits school to conduct workshops and consultation sessions

Storyboard

To visualize the user flow and context of interactions with our mobile therapeutic clinic and web platform, we created various scenarios, an example of which is illustrated below.
Penn, a vigilant parent, notices increasing signs of stress in their child's behavior.
Seeking guidance online, Penn is overwhelmed by the multitude of unverified mental health resources.
Right at that time, Penn receives an email from their child’s school about 1:1 wellbeing sessions conducted by Heart Wheels in the school.
Even though Penn feels nervous, they sign their child up for a 1:1 session, thinking Heart Wheels might make them feel better.
Penn’s nervousness keeps on building as the day of the 1:1 session approaches.
They quickly arrive at the school to pick their child after the session with Heart Wheels is over.

Wireframes and planning

We developed wireframes and rough layouts for various elements of our service, such as the website and the communication links between schools, service providers, and caregivers, as well as for the consultation session spaces. These wireframes were intended to establish a basic structure for both the digital and spatial aspects of the service, for prototyping and testing purposes.
Wireframes for website pages

Service ecosystem map and blueprint

To visualize the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical and digital artifacts), and processes — that are directly tied to touch-points in a specific customer journey and contribute to creating user experiences, we devised a service blueprint and a service ecosystem map. We identified the following as the user-facing end of the service:

Step 1

Heart Wheels collaborates with school to host workshops and consultation sessions

Step 2

School emails caregivers to inform about the Heart Wheels service

Step 3

Caregivers RSVP for the workshop

Step 4

Workshop conducted in school, where information about consultation sessions is conveyed

Step 5

Interested caregivers book childrens’ appointments with Heart Wheels therapists

Step 6

Families visit for Consultation Week
Service blueprint
Service ecosystem map
Brainstorming session for identifying service components

Usability testing

Taking the Wheel: Altering the Design through Usability Testing

Key takeaways and insights

We conducted remote and in-person moderated usability tests with 7 participants, including teenagers, caregivers, school counselors and therapists. Participants were asked to envision and interact with various scenarios in the context of the service touch-points. They were prompted to think out loud and provide feedback at each step. We also asked a set of questions to gather further information.

The goal of the feedback was to assess the following parameters of the service: holistic understanding of the service, usability, and usefulness.

Our prototypes received mostly positive feedback from participants. They found it easy to understand the service flow and the 'Think Aloud' exercise allowed us to gather their thoughts and concerns. Here are a few takeaways and insights:

Curated spaces for consultations

77% of participants desired specialized spaces for consultations, like the bus, and keywords uncovered were "safe," "calming," "decompressing," "soundproof," "private," and "fun."

Elementary to middle schoolers

90% of participants requested age group information for children due to specialized needs for each group, leading us to focus on children aged 3-13 years old, based on initial survey data.

Website to visually represent the mission

Participants felt the website was not visually communicating the mission, diminishing its value and potential impact. They also pointed out the lack of inclusive language and multilingual options.
Conducting in-person and remote usability tests

Design and development

The destination: Easier access to mental health resources

Key takeaways and insights

The mobile therapy clinic is designed with elementary and middle school children in mind, it has the following design elements:

Caters to elementary and middle school students

It is painted with vibrant illustrations internally and externally to appeal to children.

Flexible spaces and curated planning

It is divided into 3 zones: a waiting area, a flexible therapy space, and an individual consultation area. the therapy space can be used for group or individual therapy.

Ample natural light and ventilation

It has skylights and colorful windows all throughout and slit windows above eye level in private areas, for light and ventilation while maintaining privacy.
Move the slider to see the internal and external views of the mobile therapy clinic

Accompanying website

The final website screens embody the vision of the mission, while conveying the necessary information.
We conducted remote and in-person moderated usability tests with 7 participants, including teenagers, caregivers, school counselors and therapists. Participants were asked to envision and interact with various scenarios in the context of the service touch-points. They were prompted to think out loud and provide feedback at each step. We also asked a set of questions to gather further information.

The goal of the feedback was to assess the following parameters of the service: holistic understanding of the service, usability, and usefulness.

Our prototypes received mostly positive feedback from participants. They found it easy to understand the service flow and the 'Think Aloud' exercise allowed us to gather their thoughts and concerns. Here are a few takeaways and insights:

Learnings and Takeaways

Evaluating the journey

Mobile therapy clinic

The mobile therapy clinic is designed with elementary and middle school children in mind, it has the following design elements:

Caters to elementary and middle school students

It is painted with vibrant illustrations internally and externally to appeal to children.

Flexible spaces and curated planning

It is divided into 3 zones: a waiting area, a flexible therapy space, and an individual consultation area. the therapy space can be used for group or individual therapy.

Ample natural light and ventilation

It has skylights and colorful windows all throughout and slit windows above eye level in private areas, for light and ventilation while maintaining privacy.

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