Mindline.sg is a digital platform that provides tools, tips and resources to help Singaporeans improve their mental wellbeing. The projects’ objective was to better understand the challenges of youths' mental wellbeing so as to design and validate mindline features targeted towards youths.

Design Challenge

Investigate the challenges that youths face when coping with stressors and seeking professional support and find solutions that support youths in their mental wellbeing.

My Role

As a UX researcher, I designed research workshops, facilitated focus group discussions, and synthesised insights for presentation. I also created screen flows while my colleagues designed the click-through wireframes.

Role

UX Researcher

Timeline

Aug 2021 - Jan 2022

Collaboration

Team of 5 UX/UI
Designers

Organisations

MOHT youth mindline
Chemistry Team

Design Process

Discover

Research Planning
Focus Group Discussions

Define

Iceberg Model
Journey Map
Ecosystem Map
Insight Statements

Ideate

Co-creation Workshops
Product Vision Strategy

Design

Screen Flows
‍Wireframes
Validation Sessions

Research & Problem Discovery

In order unpack the nuances of this complex issue, we investigated both the mindset and behaviour of youths, as well as the relationships and dependencies they have with their support ecosystem.
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Scoping Research Plan with Client

Based on both the clients’ and consultants’ past research experiences, we collectively identified what we know and do not know about youth mental health to uncover knowledge gaps.

Recruiting From a Diverse Sample

To serve the varied needs of diverse youths, we interviewed 29 participants of different educational backgrounds, life phases, and mental health conditions.

Early graduates from IHL or entered the workforce

New students in their schools

Never sought professional help for mental wellbeing

Lived experiences
(mental wellbeing issues)

At risk youths (e.g. family conflict, financial issues)

Focus Group Discussions Under Time Constraints

I co-facilitated 6 of these focus group discussions. A challenge we faced when preparing these FGDs was to collect as much insights from our participants in the time constraint whilst still holding space for them to reflect deeply on sensitive questions. This was a difficult balance to maintain, Furthermore, as each group had 5-6 participants, it was also important to manage the dynamic of their group discussions well in order to hold a safe space for them.

Using Miro Templates To Streamline Constructive Conversations

Hence, we strategically designed the workshops as interactive miro workshops using tools and frameworks to assist us in having constructive discussions. We also iterated upon the workshop structures after each FGD in order to prioritise the best questions.
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I've worked with many companies that do facilitation and workshops, and I think Chemistry has an edge in this. The tools and all that are interesting, but at the end of the day, they are just tools - it's how you use them and contextualise them in each project which counts. Chemistry does this extremely well and through careful use of these tools we were able to attain rich insights from our research and validation insights. This is a testament to the effort and preparation that was put into this.

- The Mindline Team

Synthesis of Insights

With the rich amount of qualitative data collected through our focus group discussions, I applied different design thinking and systems thinking frameworks to unearth key insights. Here are a few key insights:

Research Question #1

What are the common root causes to the challenges and stressors that youths face?

Findings from Iceberg Model Analysis

Youths often face high pressures in competitive academic & workplace environments, this leads youths to compare themselves and become excessively self-critical.

Research Question #2

What are the help-seeking behaviours of youths? What challenges do they face?

Findings from Journey Map

1. Healthy coping strategies are perceived as effortful and time-consuming to practise.
2. Free professional mental health services are perceived as inaccessible and ineffective.

Research Question #3

Who are the key actors that support youths’ mental wellbeing, what prevents youths from reaching out?

Findings from Ecosystem Mapping

1. Youths’ first avenues of support (peers/family) are sometimes unable to provide effective help.
2. Youths struggle to find a counsellor or therapist suited to their needs and preferences.

Key Opportunity Statements

After our synthesis, we prioritised key insight statements based on impact and the feasibility of the opportunity areas and this was brought forward to ideation. The other insights are spelled out in the report for the client's review for future projects.
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1. How might we strengthen youths’ community of support with knowledge and social-emotional skills?

2. How might we nudge youths towards healthy coping strategies in relieving stress?

3. How might we assist youths in finding the right professional help that suits their preferences and needs?

Defining Strategy

We presented our research to a stakeholders who work in the mental wellbeing space and invited them to share their ideas on how we can improve existing services. As these stakeholders would eventually be our ecosystem partners during the implementation of these ideas, this was useful to get their buy-in early during the ideation stage.
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Ideating with Ecosystem Partners

We leveraged upon the expertise of 25 representatives from the mental healthcare sector to ideate upon the opportunity areas. In particular, we prompted them to reflect how their respective roles in the ecosystem could play a part in their proposed solutions.

Institutional Representatives or Youth Programme Managers

Mental Wellbeing Professionals or Social Workers

Translating Insights Into Product Vision Strategy

We worked closely with the MOHT youth mindline project team to develop a larger narrative concerning the continuum of youth mental health care, by crafting and translating the product vision for youth mindline into concrete mission statements and objectives that informed design principles and a high-level journey map.

Designing Concepts

Together with the client team, we synthesised the different ideas suggested during the co-creation session and prioritised 3 ideas to move forward with prototyping into mid-fidelity screens.

1. DIY Workspace for Mindful Productivity

A smart customisable dashboard that helps youths seamlessly integrate healthy coping strategies into their lives.

Youths will have easy access to a widget library that recommends productivity and mental wellbeing tools based on the distinct needs, emotions, preferences, and behaviours of the user profile.

2. Activated Communities

A community platform that fosters a safe, positive, and reassuring space for youths to explore various community groups pertaining to mental wellbeing and other interests.
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This raises awareness that youths are not facing their struggles alone as they receive peer support from an organic community who share similar experiences.

3. Therapy Matcher

A Therapist Catalogue for youths to easily find professional support matched to their needs. Youths are also able to find reliable information on how therapy works and the various types of therapy available.
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This platform strives to reduce the stigma of seeking mental wellbeing support, as well as raise awareness and accessibility of professional services in Singapore.

Validation & Testing

Validation Sessions with End-Users

We recruited 43 youths to test our ideas. I created the screen flows and crafted the questions to ask our participants while my colleagues designed the click-through wireframes.

During the sessions, we introduced the context of the problem we are striving to solve and brought them through the various features and functionalities of our 3 ideas. We collected their feedback via A/B testing and focus group discussions.

Most youths resonated with the benefits of our concepts, whilst also sharing several considerations to bear in mind to ensure that they are user-friendly and effective. We synthesised these into a final report of recommendations which will be communicated to relevant stakeholders during the implementation stage.

Reflections & Takeaways

User Research Is Not Asking for Opinions, but Understanding Behaviour

As UX researchers, we want to understand our users' needs in order to design solutions to improve their lives. However, different users that we select and interview may have different opinions on the same experience or product. Hence, how do we make sense of this subjectivity?

Through my research experiences, I learned to notice when participants are sharing opinions about what they think they will do and instead ask them to elaborate on their past experiences and share what they actually did. This allows us to infer the psychology and behaviour of users instead of just taking opinions at face value.
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Literature Reviews & Quantitative Research to Support User Research

What can be further improved was to conduct more desktop research and quantitative research like surveys in order to scope the most pertinent questions first. Having gone through such a massive qualitative research process, I realised that time is always a constraint and we could be more efficient if we prioritised the key research questions that would generate the most actionable insights.

Furthermore, I also realised that having background experience contributes vastly to my intuition when interviewing people and finding deep insights.
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Facilitation as a Core Skill

I received positive feedback from both my Chemistry colleagues and MOHT directors for my facilitation abilities. Despite the sensitive matter of the topic and the constraint of online facilitation, I was able to conveying empathy and comfort to build psychological safety in the FGD for people to share something personal to them. This was heartening to know as facilitation is something that I enjoy and has meaningful impact.
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