INF1602 Course Project, University of Toronto, CA

MindHub

We aim to support students’ mental health problems.

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MindHub

OVERVIEW

MindHub is a mobile application designed to provide trustworthy mental support to students at University of Toronto (UofT).

This was created as a term project of course INF1602 in Master of Information program as a team of 6 students, with the objective being to understand and improve user experience of students at University of Toronto .

Timeline

2022.10 - 2022. 12

Project Settings

Team Members

Mia Mo, Shera Fu, Valerie Wu, Anna Li, Hailing Zhang, Maya Lowenstein

My Role

UX Designer and Researcher

  • Being the section lead during the research analysis stage who takes the main responsibility in conducting the survey and analyzing the research results.

  • Also responsible for app visual and interface design, prototyping & testing

Tools

Figma, Powerpoint, Balsamic

Client

The Innovation Hub at University of Toronto

Background & Problems

The current state of the student mental support at University of Toronto has focused primarily on clinical intervention for people who recognize their need and are both willing and able to seek help at places like the campus mental health clinic or other wellness centres. However, many students may not meet the criteria and they might be reluctant to seek for help. Therefore, our team collaborate with Innovation Hub to develop a solution to solve this problem.

Goals

Our mobile app aim to complete the following hills:

  1. Skeptical students can be gradually introduced to support methods so they can feel more open towards mental health interventions​.

  2. Struggling students can talk about their worries in a trusted place before the stress becomes a mental crisis.

  3. Lonely students can find peers who can relate to their situation and feel part of a community.

Research & Insights

We conducted background research, quantitative research and qualitative research to gain a deeper understanding on students’ needs.

Survey

We sent out a survey among UofT students and received 20 valid response at the end. The survey results helped to answer most of our research questions including the types of mental health resources that UofT students prefer most, factors that negatively affect student mental health, the current issues UofT students are experiencing, the familiarity with mental health resources provided by  UofT, as well as the social and physical activities that are beneficial for mental health according to students. 

Survey Insights

  • Most participants claimed they have had negative thoughts in the past 3 months but a large proportion of them NEVER seek clinic help.

  • UofT students are unfamiliar with the mental health support resources.

  • Employment Stress and Academic Stress are the most significant factors that cause students’ negative emotions.

  • “Stress-relief activities” and “Group/Private Exercises” are the most popular methods chosen by students to improve their mental status.

Interview

We interviewed 3 students at UofT. Two of the participants were female and one was male. All three of the participants were fourth year undergraduate students.

Opportunities

  1. Making students believe that they can go for mental support without bias and embarrassment.

  2. Eliminating then obstacles when students searching for mental help resources.

  3. Group activities sounds appealing to students.

Persona

We created one primary persona, Sam the Skeptic, based on the research results. Sam is a 20-year-old engineering students at UofT who is under academic pressure and rarely socialize in campus. He is skeptical about the mental support provided by school and reluctant to seek for help if the procedure is complicated.

Ideation

We brainstormed ideas that can cope with the problems and opportunities that we discussed earlier and grouped them into different categories.

we used the dot-voting method to sort out the ideas that are most feasible and impactful and plot them into a prioritization grid .

Prioritization Grid

Our Solutions

How can we help students receive different levels of mental support easier?

Based on our research results and ideation process, our team come up with 3 mental support strategies of increasing trust levels and professional levels. In order to gradually increase the confidence of students seeking for mental help and lead students with distinct mental problems to go for professional help.

Low Trust and Least Professional

Medium Trust and Medium Professional

High Trust and Most Professional

Chat Room

Study Break

Meet with a Therapist

Design

We integrated the above 3 solutions into a mobile app, and we name it MindHub. We first created low-fidelity prototype, and I conducted lean-evaluation to 4 students in order to test the idea and the basic interface design among target users. We then summarized the feedbacks and developed the medium-fidelity prototype.

We made the booking procedure easier

We included more information on the home screen and changed the icons on the navigation bar

Medium-Fidelity Prototype

We used Figma to build a medium fidelity prototype for profile page and the 3 features shown above. I created the following task:

Evaluation Next Steps

After developing the medium prototype, we planned a summative evaluation using the DECIDE framework. I was in charge of observing and conducting a 15-min interview with 2 participants as well as analyzing feedbacks.

  • Clarify labels for “Today’s events” and “Upcoming appointments” on home screen and choose new symbols for Events and Appointments based on Nielsen’s design heuristics that are more recognizable for users.​

  • ​Add filter option for the study break page so that events can be sorted based on timing and location. add filter option for the counsellors / medical experts so they can be sorted based on their specialty. 

  • Add a lower involvement feature, such as a diary or post sharing.​