Creative Arts Therapy

Name of App

Healing Arc

Role

UX/UI Designer

Timeline

6-8 Weeks

Tools

Figma and Miro

Overview

Creating an experience that enable users to take a quick break from their daily stressors. Healing Arc is a creative arts therapy app that allows users to do so.

Problem Space

Our users find it difficult to keep their mental health in check. They often feel stressed, agitated or exhausted from external factors.

48 percent of Canadians say they feel "really or seriously stressed" at least once a week

Canadians (45%) by far say that their "work/job" is the main cause of stress in their lives

Some common sources of stress, known as stressors, include the physical environments around you, family and relationships, work, life situations, major life changes

How might we create an app that allows users to relieve their stress conveniently?

The Solution

Create something easy for our targeted audience to use on the go and therefore not limited by schedules, locations or budget

Survey Results

The goal for putting out a survey is to find potential users to interview and uncover how they would rate their overall physical health, mental health and stress.

Interviews

  • 5 participants were interviewed via zoom

  • Primary goal: understand what potential users struggle with mental health (or wellness) and stress and learn about the ways they cope

  • Common themes that were identified include:

Bad Habits

Goals

Therapy

Stress Triggers

Stress Outlets

  • Top bad habits included smoking, stress eating or bad eating habits, laziness, drinking, not working out and procrastination

  • Users would like therapy to be more affordable, to have more tine to unwind, be more productive, have a healthier diet and find easier ways to manage stress

  • Major pain points with therapy include the pricing of therapy, difficulty finding the right therapy, no time for it, lots of misconceptions with therapy and worried about being judged by others

  • Common stress triggers include family, work, daily chores, and a chaotic home

  • Common stress outlets include food, reading, spending time with friends, yoga, art, watch tv etc.

  • Based off all the interviews, most people find therapy necessary but it is quite expensive and hard to schedule

    • They need something that can help them cope on a day to day basis

Key findings that our users:

  • Are not financially stable enough to afford therapy

  • Do not have the time to see a therapist or try therapy

  • Fear of being labelled as “crazy”

  • Are anxious sharing intimate thoughts

  • Have difficulty finding the right therapist

  • Know that a variety of therapy available

Empathy Map

User Persona

Problem Statement & Hypothesis

  • It is difficult for people to take care of their mental health due to the lack of time and resources. Other reasons range from people yielding to the social stigma surrounding mental health, to many people prioritising money and time over mental health.

  • To design an app to help overcome stress and/or anxiety in the daily lives of people aged 20-35, using Creative Art Therapy with special consideration to concerns about money and timing.

  • According to our research, this demographic of people experience some of the most stressful situations and struggle with many mental health issues, so we wanted to create an outlet to help reduce the aforementioned problems anywhere and any time.

Competitor Analysis

Prioritization Matrix

  • A prioritization matrix was completed to identify which features were going to be the main focus on when creating the app

  • The main feature of the app was to have creative therapeutic activities that will stimulate mind in a positive way

  • This was to encourage user to take action to improve mental well-being on a smaller scale

User Journey Map

Storyboard

User Flow

Low-Fidelity

Mid Fidelity

Users were very pleased with the aesthetics from the hi-fi prototype

Some users didn’t know what a mandala was

Navigation through app was very easy, good user flow

Users felt that the other features were an excellent addition to the app’s creative art therapy activities

Splash Page

Splash page with three introduction screens users can swipe through. Gives users an idea of what the app is all about

Menus

Hamburger menus that users can easily navigate to. They can change app notifications, view messages from friends, and look at their artwork!

In App Activities

An example of an in app activity that users can choose from

In Home Activities

An example of an at home activity users can choose from

Emergency / Bell Lets Talk Feature

A feature that enables users to destress by a virtual stress ball. Users simply hold the screen down and release.

Stress Ball Feature

Since this is an app tied to mental health, an emergency feature was added to show users they are not alone and that help can be provided

Other Features

Music Player feature that users can play while doing activities

Camera feature that allows users to take photos of their work to share with their friends on the app

Learning Outcomes

Test more and test often
User testing is so important in order to gain user insight. It is also good to do more user testing as much as possible

Quality > Quantity
It is better to focus on some features and perfect the functions rather than trying to incorporate too many features

Patience
It is best to take your time with designing and not to rush things