I started with a mental health issue since it caught my interest. I want to treat my friends who are diagnosed with depression better. But, It’s well known that depression patient who is considered to be under doctor’s care can’t receive any treatment that is out of the doctor’s order. So, I decided to focus on a small supportive approach that can be done by themselves or friends.

I have done 11 students interview session. The insights in got from the interviews shows that friends are significant in supporting someone in coping with adversity. So I adopt social support theory to the project.

The next important concept I need to do a lot of research in is psychology. I studied the psychologist methods with psychology professors. I was so excite to understand how mental illness affects people and how psychologists resolve. I spent a month attending lectures with the professors and reading research.

I found mood tracker, a very flexible tool that psychologists use on patients in various cases. People also widely use it for journal diaries. It is a simple thing with potential to improve and create more value.

‘Make mindmory’ Emotion memo tool kit including notepapers, 6 basic emotion stickers, and website. At the end of the week, participants have to send their notepaper to score and summarize their moods. They’ll receive positive letters from anonymous friends and get their turn to send a letter to anyone on the platform too.

I got new insights and feedback to develop the project. knowing that people can’t define their feeling precisely, they generally have 2-3 feelings at the moment. and most participants like to receive and send a letter, small support from friends is a plus to help get them feeling better following the social support theory. so, It was interesting to apply social support theory to the mood tracker to improve the tool's user experience.

There is one more problem that often happens to mood tracker users which is the user retention rate of the user, especially if they chose to do the mood tracker on their own (without doctor/psychologist care). It is all too easy to forget to take notes. This problem drove me to begin reading ‘Hooked’ how to build a habit-forming product by Nir Eyal. The book introduces a canvas of a four-step pattern included in products to build and boost user engagement by gently changing their behavior.

The canvas has helped me in developing the product's user experience.

I created several prototypes and user interfaces to improve the product's usability.