MENTAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW
Studio Three Project, 2019
5 Weeks
For my Fall of Junior studio class, we were tasked with creating an integrated smart product with a corresponding application. There was a choice between a wellness device, infant device, etc. This was an intensive five week week project, I chose to choose the category of a wellness integrated smart product.
For this project I decided to focus on mental health. I specifically chose to focus on people who are taking SSRI medications. This is because these medications take about a month to start working in the body, making it hard to track progress. What is meant by "hard to track" means whether the medication works for that person, if a new medication needs to be tried, etc. Since the changes can be so slow and feel minuscule, it's important to check in with changes often. Which, is something this project aims to help users in .
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When interviewing users and with preliminary research, it was discovered that appointments with Psychiatrists ,or Primary Care Providers, are usually only 20-30 minutes long. In these short appointments patients felt they didn't tell their doctor enough about their medication process. These set of devices offer an aid/solution for this problem.
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USER OUTLOOK
Taking research from interviews and Reddit forums, I summarized the users objectives that this product needed to solve, or help with. I then took preliminary and user research to create a user case analysis. What this does is map out a current SSRI takers moods and reactions throughout the day. This allowed me to understand the user more and see areas of the day they could track their mood and mindset in.
DESIGN PROCCESS
For the ideation and design process I had to break down what we could monitor throughout the day for the user. The problem was, i did not want the monitoring process to be intrusive throughout the users day.
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I also chose the brand Vivalnk to use for inspiration. This company currently makes small wearable medical devices that have a clean and fresh aesthetic, which helps the user stay calm and confident in the technology.
PHYSICAL PRODUCT BREAKDOWN
For this integrated mental health care system, I went forward with a couple of small products. These would optionally be integrated into the users life. The user could choose between a watch smart product and small unobtrusive patch that measures cortisol through sweat. A user could choose to have one, or both of the options.
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The "smart watch" could also be integrated into an app for current smart watches currently on the market. The smart watch would vibrate or "bing" and have the user enter their mood and clarity three times a day. From my research I saw that it was important to have a seamless and easy option to capture feelings throughout the day.
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For the cortisol option, researchers at Stanford recently developed a tiny sticker patch that has this technology. This could be a wearable device that a provider could assign for high stress and or high anxiety patients. This could help see medication impact over the course of 2-4 weeks.
DIGITAL PRODUCT BREAKDOWN
The next stage if this product was to include an application where users could lo at and share their progress with providers. I also wanted to include the option for patients to enter in more information as they deemed fit. The challenging and interesting part was to figure out how all of these devices would "talk" to each other.
FINAL UI:
SUMMARY
Thank you for taking the time to look through this extensive project. In summary the solution has multiple options, giving the user freedom to choose a combination that works for them.
