SORMI
Rethinking the Design Question:
How might we help UofT students who are struggling with mental health issues so they can find help easily and more accessibly
Empathize
zSurveys
As an initial research method, I created a survey for quantitative data. to gather the target audience, students at the University of Toronto struggling with mental health, and understand their needs, perspectives and experiences. I conducted the survey with 46 participants using Google Forms (software to create surveys and forms). All the participants were students at the University of Toronto. The participants were not informed what the survey was for, it was only briefly explained to avoid biased answers. I attempted to make the survey questions as pertinent as possible.
These are the few questions I asked and the results.
R
User Interviews
From the 46 surveyees, I selected 5 participants who fit our target audience and conducted in-depth interviews on Zoom with each of them. Each interview lasted approximately 30-45 minutes. Here, I collected qualitative data and used
These are the few questions I asked our interviewees:
In the survey, you indicated that you felt _____ way, can you please elaborate on what and why you felt this way?
When do you feel that you struggle the most?
When you feel this way, do you do anything about it?
If yes, what do you do and does it help?
If not, then what do you do?
Have you sought help?
If yes, what resources have you used and did they help? Did you use any resources that didn’t work out for you?
If not, was there a reason?
What are some things that you think would help with your well-being?
2. Define
Affinity Mapping
I used this technique to identify patterns and themes from the interviews. I grouped the consistent data by topic and this allowed me to better see connections and relationships.
The affinity mapping helped me bring to life two personas - two students called Leah and Alex.
screen people with surveys (quantitative data)
be more specific with explaining qs in the survey
user interviews (qualitative data)
be clear on what questions i asked
talk about what could be biased and what is useful
affinity mappingp
these are the themes/groupings i found
they’re pretty consistent with the participants
after gathering these insights, what are my recommendations for the team
after i found these, these are the top things i found
these are my recommendations : social (talk to people rather than professionals cause students)
but these are also risks and concerns
people r putting themselves up there
they could be bullied, data
these are the ways you can mitigate it
Personas
themes
Storyboarding
day in the life of our user
same problem as Mindfulu- different “solutions”
I was put onto
UXR People do this
main goal: putting people first
what are the participants concerned the post
how can i make their life better
im the advocate for the participants but also a part of the team im working with (inform the team about their concerns but also what we should do)
not a prescription but suggestion recommendations
can’t be biased from me
I did this because since our team is more technical
based on all of these insights, these are my recommendations
as a team, we do a workshop
the best solution we wanna go for
what we decided was a mood tracking app because of xyz
other concept, forum for xyz
based on these concepts we created an MVP design (minimal viable product)
wowza
we did concept testing based on these 2
concept testing vs usability
Goal for concept testing: You do concept testing vs usability testing because how do we know that this is what people expect? IS THIS WHAT PPL WANT
how do we know this is what the users want?
its expensive
we just show the participants a rough sketch and concept 1 and 2 and see what they think
5-7 people concept A and B
see what they like better
different ways to do this testing
AB Testing - what sticks with people and performs better
Usability testing - can people go through these steps
task flows
is this how people brains works
are they able to login/signup
are they able to navigate from a to b
are they able to write a forum