SORMI

Overview

SORMI is a social platform with features of a blogging forum, chatting, resources and a tracking survey to improve the well-being of students.

The Mission:

Students are struggling with their mental health here at the University of Toronto and some don’t even know they are struggling!

How might we help students at the University of Toronto who are struggling with mental health issues so they can find help easily and more accessible?

Background:

I am a part of a start-up company called MindFulU, a mood-tracking app with the same mission in mind. My role was a UX/UI designer and our team won an award for our app.

However, I decided to rethink the problem. I was brought into the team late so I wasn’t a part of the research or discovery phase. With a human-centred approach, I decided to create SORMI.

Please keep in mind that the following were my recommendations. MindFulU was already built but the impact of SORMI is that the team will add the recommended features as an update.

I even rebranded because SORMI sounded more like a chatting forum app and it gives a more uplifting feeling to users. I did this because I care about the well-being of fellow students and wanted to create an effective solution that focuses on the users and is driven by quantitative and qualitative data instead of being driven by ideas.

The Process:

SORMI was built I followed the design thinking process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

Understanding the Problem

I used the following research methods:

  1. Screening Survey

  2. User Interviews

  3. Affinity Mapping

  4. Personas

  5. Storyboarding

  6. Jobs to be Done

Gathering Insights

I sent out a screening survey and received 50 responses from students at the University of Toronto. From there, I picked participants who fit the users best and conducted user interviews through Zoom.

Affinity Mapping

From my notes in the user interviews, I conducted affinity mapping to synthesize data that was consistent. I grouped the common themes I found.

Personas

From the concerns and insights of the participants, I created two personas: Leah Rivera and Alex Liu. These helped me better understand and empathize with the students’ needs, experiences, behaviours and goals. It allowed me to see from their perspective.

Storyboarding: User-Centric

I then planned out a storyboard to gain an even better perspective on specific user scenarios. With this visualization, it helped me understand the day-to-day of my participants and what would drive users to perform a particular action.

Jobs To Be Done

maybe I’ll do this we’ll see

The Solution

  • A forum where or students where they can anonymously post their thoughts

  • A chatting option for students to find supportive communities

  • A survey where students can see their progress in their journey

  • Resources where students can seek professional help (from inside of school and outside of school)

Specific Features

Forum

  • “Tag” Examples:

    • “Advice” when users are looking for advice

    • “Rant” when users simply want to let out their thoughts

    • “Support/love” when users want to post empowering and supportive memes or a success/growth mental health journey

    • “Question” when users have a question

Progress Tracker

  • Will generate recommended sources that fit best to the users’ needs

Sources

  • Will have meditation videos like breathing exercises

  • School services will also include a calendar of upcoming events

    • Yoga meditation that the UofT student life provides

    • Puppy visits

Risks and Factors

The forum can’t become a cancel/exposing culture. For instance, people may want to complain about a professor and name-drop

  • This isn’t healthy so a bot will identify this and make the name “Bob”)

What happens if a post is too personal and traumatic and ends up affecting other students’ mental health?

  • There will be an additional tag for trigger warnings

Why not just Reddit? What makes this special?

  • This is specifically a safe space for the well-being of students where students can be vulnerable and find supportive communities.

  • The forum also won’t be bombarded with questions like academic courses and it is not a place where high schoolers can ask questions on how to enter UofT.

What if someone takes advantage of vulnerable students?

  • A bot will automatically identify inappropriate messages

  • A report system will also be implemented.

User Flows

  • I created a user flow to be aware of how to optimize and generate a design that works for a better user experience.

Wireframing the Solution

Based on my findings and features, I quickly mocked up some basic wireframes on paper. This involved establishing a standardized visual hierarchy and layout.

Developing the Designs

I created mockups in Figma

Usability Testing

Final Product