Baseline
A mental health app to track, practice, discover & connect with community.
As someone deeply passionate about mental health, accessibility, affordability, community, and connection; this solo project was driven by a desire to design something meaningful and empowering to help users reconnect with themselves beyond the screen. In this end-to-end UX/UI project, I conducted UX research, ideation, and UI design to conceptualise a mobile app that supports busy humans in tracking and maintaining their baseline mental health. The app featured a personalised dashboard, educational content, habit tracking and motivators, and real world community connection features. All designed to foster consistent mental wellbeing practices in and outside of the digital space.
My Roles
Research
Project Scope
Desktop Research
User Interviews
Surveys
Refine
Affinity Map
Problem Statement
Personas
Journey Map
Empathy Map
Design
Brainstorming
MVP
Crazy 8s
Sketches
Story Board
User Flows
Wire-frames
Delivery
Concept testing
User Testing
Hi-Fi Prototyping
Final Presentation
The Project
June 2024
1 Month
Solo Personal Project
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Delivery
Mobile App
Problem Statment
Humans who lead busy lifestyles, need a way to establish, track, maintain and learn about their baseline mental health tasks and practices.
They find long term motivation difficult, particularly through positive periods of their life.
They also struggle to find a solution that has legitimacy, is personalised/customiseable and incorporates community.
Research
The primary and desktop research consistently validated that affordability was important to accessing mental health care and people regularly needed assistance with emotion regulation. There was also a gap in usage of mental health apps and people were curious to use them. It is a growing market.
Answering ‘Why Now, Why Digital?’
Primary Research Insights
Answering ‘Why Now, Why Digital?’
Desktop Research Insights
Refine
What did people need from a mental health app?
Affinity Mapping & Identifying the global themes, gaps, opportunities & the under-serviced
Affinity mapping synthesised data from surveys, interviews, and competitor analysis. There were common pain points, desires, motivators and learning styles that began to appear, all human-centered research shaping the final design of Baseline App.
It became clear, that to maintain mental health practices; users were motivated by tracking, visible stats, personalisation & community.
This shaped the app’s features and final delivery.
Who Wants this Solution?
Research Backed User Personas
Persona 1: Productive & Practiced Peta
Persona 2: Conscious & Curious Cade
What would their journey look like?
Empathy Mapping, Journey Mapping & Story Boarding to reveal a real-world solution
Empathy Map
User Journey Map
Storyboarding for community function
Design
Driving Home Human Centric Design
How Might We?
Fluidity in Ideation
Brain Storming & Crazy 8s
Brainstorming and ideation began with "How might we" statements in mind, ensuring our solutions addressed key user needs, while closed card sorting, sketching, and Crazy 8s helped refine ideas before committing to wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes.
Brainstorming
Refinement
Minimum Viable Product
Sketches
Creating an Information Rich Path with Lean and Efficient Task Completion
User Flows & Wireframing
To develop a clear road map of so much info on a small screen lowering mental load to encourage users to record track and practice was a tall order. Convenience and intuitive design was really key to the success of such a personal and potentially sensitive app. User Flows & Wireframing were essential steps to preparing information and visual hierarchy before hi-fi design; but most importantly, was it what users expected?
Interaction vs expectations
Concept Testing Wireframes
I created initial wireframe flows and ran three user concept tests. I prefaced a task to the user and then presenting one screen at a time, asked users":
“What would you expect the next screen to look like?”
Follow-up qualitative questions uncovered key usability issues early. This approach improved the efficiency of the design process and helped avoid bottlenecks during Hi-Fi Prototype user testing, later in the design process.
Wireframes and concept testing were essential to validating and delivering a human-centred design for Baseline.
