Problem

The average delay between the onset of the symptoms of depression and intervention is 8-10 years. Its human and economic costs are substantial. And it’s only getting worse.

From 2013 to 2016, the rate of diagnoses in Massive Depression Disorder among adolescents has risen 63% from 1.6% to 2.6%, and rose 47% among millennials, from 3.0% to 4.4%.

The impact is staggering and only increasing. Individuals are most likely to have a depressive episode in college since it is their first time living without immediate support and are going through a stressful environment.

Design Process

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

7
Expert Interviews

1
Online Survey

Poster series to learn about other's feelings about depression.

Secondary Research

KEY INSIGHTS & LEARNINGS

What we learnt:

• We need to focus on empowering and educating potential support group (close friends and classmates).
• We understood that we neither are trained psychologists nor we can expect students to become one.
• Mental Health Services for college students are busy, and cannot maintain the same day one on one counselling and students who are suffering from depression can take up to 8 years to identify that they are suffering from it. 
• Those who have a larger support group has a larger chance for recovery.
  
  

Strategy:

• The amount of information available via online resources needs to be filtered out with the help of experts and had to be designed for college students.
• We want potentials support group to be more aware of depression and learn to empathize with people in depression.
  
• We want that support group should learn social reasoning skills to provide relief and support to the emotional state of the person suffering from depression.
• Making a digital and interactive product can help us to reach to maximum students.
  

CONCEPTS EXPLORATIONS

Explored, ideate & discussed concept for solution via sketches.

Concept 1.    (Too specific)

To educate about the difference between Depression and Sadness because students often mistake depression with sadness.

After testing this concept with students, they find it overwhelming to concentrate on one aspect of the problem. 

Concept 2.    (Too abstract/general)

On the insight of depression lacks visual element. We create a repository of information od depression where students can learn how to engage with friends/classmates suffering from a different kind of depression.

After testing this concept with students, they find it difficult to get the relevant knowledge they need.

Concept 3 (Just Right)

This concept was inspired from "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch". Its a story of two friends, where one friend has to take multiple decision which will affect the life of other fiends who is suffering from depression.

Testing this concept gave us insights that it has the potential of making user empathise with people having depression and make the user aware of their role in a friend's life.

FINAL DESIGN

Plotting out the story.

We created a rough storyline with key decisions points and a different ending.
We avoided having extreme endings like suicidal thoughts.

Wireframing Interactions

After creating a storyline, we filled it with various form of micro-interaction and interactive activities. These interaction designed to make it more engaging and contributes to the story.

Prototyping

We created assets of for the prototype including characters and scenarios. And created an interactive prototype using principle and Adobe XD.

TESTING

Low-fi Prototype Testing

While testing a low fidelity prototype, users showed signs of more awareness and empathy for people suffering from depression.

Advertisement Concept's Testing.

Social Media Advertisement being the first touchpoint, we created some low fidelity concepts and tested it out with College students.

An interactive comic for mobile platforms. The story revolves around two friends, Russell and Fred, who met in college.

Through our product, we are aiming at college students who have depression will receive effective support. We also hope that, by bringing awareness of depression, students will feel less ashamed for seeking help when they need to.

Onboarding

User start playing as a character named Russel who is a student.

Interactions

App has interactive storytelling for engagement

User has to make critial decision which leads to outcomes.

There are different ending based in users critical descions.

We are aiming to impact students with depression by focusing our user group to be the potential support group in college ecosystem.

- USER'S ECOSYSTEM

- JOURNEY MAP

Future work

The solution requires advanced skills of storytelling and animation, and we plan to continue refining these.

A fully working prototype with "Framer X" tool is in the pipeline. Framer X based on React framework will enable us to generate a working app both in iOS and Andriod.

Reflection

Ricky and I have had different experiences with depression; this initially created a lot of friction between us, but eventually helped us to collaborate through focusing on different aspects of the project.

It took a long time for us to find the right direction for the solution, which taught us the importance of aggressive concept generation and testing. We were forced to take a step back and redo brainstorming for different concept ideas, in order to get at our final solution.

I learned that sometimes it is necessary to set aside your expertise  (checking your ego) so that everybody can collaborate and learn effectively.

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© 2019 Rajat Bagga,  All rights reserved