UX/UI Designer
Ideation, user interviews and surveys, paper and digital wireframing, low and high fidelity prototyping, IA design, usability studies
September - October 2022
Talk to me - an online support group for mentally vulnerable Ukrainians, which allows people to find interlocutors to discuss painful topics. The app ensures anonymity and safety. This is a place to talk out. The service targets people who feel lonely. I've performed this project as part of my professional UX certification from Google.
Millions of Ukrainians are in crisis due to war, lots of them have no one to talk to. People want to share their feelings with somebody, they all need mental support.
Create an online communication platform where users may anonymously share their feelings. Make a peer-to-peer support group.
I've run an extensive research on this project, having beforehand interviews with various experts - social workers, mental clinic doctors, etc. I have studied methodical recommendations for performing mental support groups. I have conducted an audit of comparable initiatives both online and offline. Next I collected data by 8 interviews with potential users and verified it by the surveys in social network and extracted major pain points - loneliness, need of support and concerns about privacy, security and trust.
At this stage, I've talked a lot with people related to the topic about this project. I have explored similar initiatives and projects and took part in some of them. Here I've realized that design should be guided by the "peer support" principle which is distinct from other forms of social support in that the source of support is a peer, a person who is similar in fundamental ways to the recipient of the support; their relationship is one of equality. I also conducted an audit of other online services related to mental health and adopted some ideas. I ran the "crazy eights" and "how might we?" techniques to generate ideas, and then I applied these ideas to the tension model, selected the most suitable ones and created a user flowchart.
I started the design phase with paper prototypes - it makes exploring different ideas quick and inexpensive. Next, I digitized the layouts and improved them - added a screen with communication rules, protection against trolls and an activity indicator. During the ideation stage, I realized that people from different parts of the country have different experiences, so I lay out the region in the interface and add it to the filters. At the end I've linked the digital mockups into an interactive prototype and made it ready for the first round of usability study.
The purpose of a usability study is to discover the user experience and identify any possible mistakes. At this stage, we can verify if this product is what people really need and does it serve the user's goals. My goal was to test the major app functionality - communication features in the first place. I have to find out if people understand the purpose of this app and if they are comfortable searching for interlocutors and chatting. I conducted two rounds of usability study up to sending the designs to development, in the second round I also tested the interfaces of secondary features - relaxation exercises and a personal diary.
Moderated usability study
8 participants
Ukraine, remote
In result of this usability study, I made significant changes to the process of switching the activity status and regrouped the elements on the main screen. I removed the ability to create group chats and left one public chat instead.
Moderated usability study
8 participants
Ukraine, remote
As a result of this round of usability study, I changed the activity status switcher again and rearranged the position and appearance of many elements. I changed the visual style and made sure that app functionality the user's needs.
In the process of prototyping, I developed a design system that includes all elements of the layout, guided by the atomic design principle, which makes the system very simple and clear. This layout meets all accessibility considerations - it has high colour contrast and clear visual hierarchy.
In the process of designing this application, I’ve learned that designing for social good does not feel good, because I had to meet a lot of human experiences and emotions during user interviews and usability studies and let them pass through myself. But the good news is that people really need this app - users say it's exactly what they're looking for, so I'm passing mockups to development as soon as possible.
