Doctors Under
the Radar
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Doctors Under the Radar
Healthcare therapy app
Role: Product Designer Apprentice
Mental health has always carried stigma. Too often, the advice is “cheer up,” “walk it off,” or “you’ll get over it.” Unlike a broken arm in a cast, mental health struggles are often invisible, even to the person experiencing them. We want everything to appear “normal,” which makes it harder to talk about. Even more so as a healthcare professional.
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Physical health challenges are easier to see and empathize with. Mental health is different. Thankfully, in recent years, it has become part of a global conversation. We're finally talking about it, and some of the stigma has lifted.
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The Need
This is Tracy, our persona. She is a family medicine physician, a mother of two, and someone who is highly dedicated to her work. Often at the expense of her wellness. While she has strong skills in communication, patience, and time management, she struggles to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Like many healthcare professionals, Tracy hides her challenges out of fear of losing the trust of patients, colleagues, or employers. She wants to do the best for her patients, but the pressure of tight deadlines often leads her to work late hours, leaving little time for the self-care she knows she needs.
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The San Francisco Chronicle reported that “normally, nurses who need to take a rest are relieved by a break nurse. But at many hospitals, break nurses have been pulled into regular duty.” This systemic strain is reflected in Tracy’s story, and in 2021, more than half of healthcare workers interviewed reported struggles with mental health.
This pro bono project aimed to highlight those hidden struggles and provide a service that helps healthcare workers like Tracy access support without stigma.
Heuristic Analysis
When visiting the site, there is a pop-up box. It is a mood check that asks, "How are you feeling today?" Some of the links are not connected. Most pop-ups are closed and can be missed when the site loads. Access to the forum is set up using a Google Form. With the need for a more confidential approach, there may be an avenue that asks for a lower cognitive load for stressed healthcare workers.
My team and I took a look at the service and site for our class project. We did a deep dive into this service and re-imagined what it could be.
Pop-up
Physician's form
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Text can be larger for readability.
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Checks for the site visitor's mood.
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All three buttons are not connected.
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Not clear where the input info will go.
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Connected to a Google Doc.
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Many prior onboarding steps.
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Displays email address when selected.
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Seems very public.
Pivot
My team and I created our survey and sent it to the contacts we had, including our social networks.
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At first, we made “Name” a required field in the form, but noticed that we didn’t get a lot of engagement from participants. Some people put “anonymous” rather than provide a name. This made sense, since talking about mental health issues is a sensitive topic. We adjusted the form and made “Name” an optional field, and noticed an immediate improvement as more surveys were returned to us.
This made a huge impact and we saw our interview confirmations jump to 80% across North America. We knew right away, it is critical to assure the healthcare worker that the service is confidential and safe.
From our interviews, we found that workers wanted to know that their information is confidential and safe, were on the go and had a hard time finding therapists and needed help
with self-care.
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Onboarding wireframes
Features
From our interview results, we found there are 4 different things that healthcare workers mentioned as essential features that they’d like to see in an app like this.
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Therapy
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Self Care
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Sharing
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Forum
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New onboarding
We decided the new members, like Tracy, would choose their path during onboarding. Also, we wanted to create a welcoming mood.
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Working on paper to communicate with the team was hugely helpful. This way, I was able to present and then pivot easily. Otherwise, there would be a lot of time and effort lost in a full re-design.
A link to the clickable prototype can be found here.
Updated app onboarding
This shows our new therapy onboarding flow.
All of our research told us clearly that this needed to be an app. Here is my Figma redesign of the onboarding flow and requesting a therapist.
The 4 option design for the profile page and buttons was a team effort.
My goal is to give the experience an ease of use and a travel poster feel. The artwork from for the home screen is from paper cut master Masayasu Uchida. Her imagery speaks to calm, travel and adventure.
