The worldwide psychological well being app market is predicted to hit $7.18 billion in 2024, up from $6.22 billion in 2023. Sadly, analysis means that customers of psychological well being apps typically encounter usability issues, together with a scarcity of customized assist, intervention, or sources, an inconsistent person expertise, and complicated or complicated interfaces. Briefly, poor design can render even probably the most probably useful apps ineffective and drive prospects away.
Which means there’s a vital alternative for newcomers within the psychological well being app area to enhance upon current UI design and make it simpler for customers to profit. For instance, in 2022, a San Francisco-based startup creating a psychological well being app for households introduced me in to create an attractive, intuitive, and family-friendly prototype to current to buyers.
The mission was a hit: The corporate acquired $22 million in funding and formally launched in 2022. However the highway to getting there included many design challenges. Right here, I talk about the issues my workforce confronted within the early design course of—together with a tedious onboarding expertise, a complicated navigation circulate, and an uninviting app interface—and the way we overcame them.
Placing Customers Entrance and Heart within the Design Course of
After I joined the mission, the corporate’s analysis workforce had already homed in on the supposed app viewers by conducting person analysis, figuring out frequent person segments, and creating person personas. The three personas had been kids going through psychological well being challenges akin to nervousness, despair, ADHD, and behavioral issues; relations and first caregivers searching for to assist these kids; and healthcare professionals offering care to the kids and their households.
My design workforce started by mapping out person flows and figuring out what options would meet the wants of the person personas. Utilizing Figma, we created low-fidelity wireframes of the app’s screens to piece collectively the place customers would begin their journey, how they’d navigate to different pages, and the important thing actions they would wish to take to finish a activity. We established that there could be 4 key areas throughout the app:
- An summary of the app’s options the place households would discover useful info akin to appointment reminders and recommended sources
- A communication portal the place kids may join with healthcare specialists through video and chat classes
- A useful resource hub for households and caregivers that included articles, white papers, downloads, and toolkits
- An space for reviews and associated paperwork that households and caregivers may view to trace their kids’s progress
Subsequent, we carried out usability testing on our preliminary wireframes with inside stakeholders to analyze our assumptions in regards to the person circulate. Above all, we wished to find out what number of steps had been required to attain particular targets, akin to finishing the onboarding course of and reaching a related article within the useful resource hub. This exercise helped us uncover the place to simplify overly complicated workflows and create extra intuitive navigation flows.
Taking the First Step: Onboarding
Remedy app onboarding ought to provide a cushty entry level for guests who might already be in distressing conditions once they first encounter the app. Sadly, the character of this app meant we needed to collect pretty intensive info throughout onboarding so as to provide related remedy plans—and our preliminary onboarding circulate comprised a number of lengthy varieties and an extended listing of questions that households would wish to reply earlier than reaching the app’s core options.
Since shortening the onboarding circulate wasn’t attainable, we aimed to make it extra interactive and manageable as an alternative.
First, we broke the onboarding course of down step-by-step to present customers a transparent sense of the place they had been and what was subsequent. We added determinate progress indicators to assist customers visualize the variety of steps till completion. A “Again” call-to-action button allowed customers to navigate again to a earlier step to rectify inaccurate info, and a “Subsequent” button enabled them to maneuver ahead by means of corrected steps. We additionally added an autosave characteristic so customers wouldn’t lose their progress in case of surprising disruptions, akin to unintended app closure.
One other overarching enchancment was the addition of clear visible prompts to the onboarding circulate. Research present that digesting info can really feel overwhelming when it’s troublesome to visualise. Robust visible orientation (icons, arrows, progress indicators, tooltips, and animations, and many others.) helps sign required actions, subsequent steps, or key info customers should take note of.
We additionally improved the presentation of the multiple-choice questions by creating a transparent visible hierarchy that distinguished every query from its attainable solutions by means of variations in font weight, measurement, and shade. Every attainable response was positioned on a separate line in a clearly seen, clickable field. Moreover, the chosen reply was highlighted with a darker shade to bolster person enter, reduce errors, and clearly present that these had been single-select questions.
Making Assets Straightforward to Discover With Intuitive Navigation
The app supplied a powerful quantity of useful info within the person useful resource hub, however we discovered that the preliminary design of that a part of the app had no clear hierarchy or logical categorization, making it seem disorderly and overwhelming. A father or mother searching for content material on separation nervousness must scroll by means of your complete useful resource hub to seek out related content material, relatively than merely navigating to an acceptable class.
We began by making a welcome display with three most important areas: studying classes (Worries and Anxiousness; Sleep and Bedtime; Anger and Aggression, and many others.); customized suggestions based mostly on customers’ earlier studying habits throughout the app; and saved sources. Throughout the studying classes space, we applied a horizontal scrolling characteristic—typically utilized in content material segmentation—that may permit customers to shortly scan completely different subjects with out extreme vertical scrolling. Customers may additionally choose a studying class to browse its articles.
We then designed the article playing cards. A preview of every article was displayed on a big card, to assist customers effectively assess its relevance and engagement potential earlier than committing their time and a focus. The playing cards included the article title, a hero picture, estimated studying time, related age group, and class tags for comparable subjects. (We additionally made the tags clickable so customers may simply soar to different articles of curiosity.)
As well as, we labored to enhance the studying expertise for every article and incorporate options to assist busy dad and mom and caregivers get probably the most out of the useful resource hub. We added a vertical progress bar to assist customers keep oriented throughout the textual content. And we included a textual content highlighter that preserved excerpts, subjects, and insights to revisit later. We additionally added a “Save for later” button so customers may return to articles.
Creating an Inviting Surroundings
Our remaining problem was promote a welcoming and supportive expertise for customers by means of visible design. The corporate already had a method information in place that outlined shade palettes, typography, and iconography. We now wanted to harmonize these design components in a approach that felt inviting and constructive for customers navigating probably delicate or triggering subjects.
The model’s major shade palette was impressed by the cool greens, pale blues, and muted pinks and purples of the coastal Pacific Northwest—colours which are typically thought of to have a soothing impact. We labored largely with these hues, however launched pops of some hotter colours to usher in extra power and hope, akin to orange and yellow for useful resource class tags.
To create a clear, balanced, and arranged format, we added ample whitespace between UI elements akin to photos, kind fields, and buttons. Equally, we elevated the padding across the textual content within the call-to-action buttons to verify the buttons had been noticeable and enormous sufficient to simply faucet on the go. We additionally elevated the line peak of the useful resource hub article textual content to make the content material extra digestible.
Lastly, impressed by analysis that suggests nature imagery might assist enhance temper, we included peaceable animal imagery—specifically, a pleasant otter who’s displayed prominently all through the app.
Constructing a profitable psychological well being app requires a compassionate and pragmatic method—and there’s a hole within the market for purposes that outperform the competitors when it comes to glorious UI. The design course of reaffirmed for me the worth of working with person personas to achieve key insights into customers’ distinctive wants and preferences. With out this key knowledge, we wouldn’t have been capable of create a tailor-made app expertise that addresses real-life issues and resonates with the kids and households who use it.
