Clara
Tackling burnout through an AI-assisted journey with regular therapist intervention.
.png)
Overview
Team Betelgeuse chose the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), "Good health and well-being" as an area of contribution and target 3.4, which aims to reduce death from noncommunicable diseases and promote mental health by 2030. We intend to concentrate on "promoting mental health and well-being."
Timeline
2 Months
My Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Team Members
3 UX Designers
2 UX Researchers
My Contributions
-
Conducted secondary research to narrow the scope of the project.
-
Conducted user interviews and analyzed the data to find common codes and themes.
-
Conceptualized and visualized the solution.
-
Conducted expert concept validation through interviews and think-aloud sessions.
-
Assisted in constructing user flows and information architecture to build wireframes.
-
Designed UI screens for the solution.
Solution-at-a-Glance
Problem Statement
How do we make tackle burnout in university students and make therapy accessible?
Solution
Clara a digital application that aids university students dealing with burnout with the use of assistive voice technology to curate AI-based exercises along with virtual therapy.
Key Features
Onboarding Flow
The onboarding process is completed with the help of assistive voice technology or by selecting options from the MCQs.
This is to lower the stigma around therapy and to help users open up about their issues to the therapist.
Recovery Roadmap
A 14-day recovery plan is crafted for the user based on the burnout level detected during onboarding. Users have to complete one task every day, which lasts for a range of 5-20 minutes.
Virtual Therapy
Based on the burnout level detected, the low burnout user will have a virtual therapy session once a week. The medium to high burnout user will have a virtual therapy session twice a week.
How did we get to the solution?
Why did we choose to work on Burnout in University Students?
From our secondary research, we found that Burnout was not recognized as a mental illness until recently, and because of the 79% increase in burnout during the pandemic, WHO had to declare it as one.
We decided to contribute to the student space, where it's easier to propose a solution that targets a wider group of users, retaining impact and efficiency.
-
Due to the scarcity of research for the target group of students.
-
The solution for an organization needs to be very specific to the triggers experienced by the employees of an organization.
-
Burnout is a syndrome that has a high chance of recurrence. Tackling burnout through strategy is essential at the student level, if not treated correctly it can be carried to their professional lives.
White Paper Research
Długosz conducted a study that states that 61% of the people had issues of which educational burnout ranked at the top of the hierarchy of issues and most were females.
Rodgers et al. conducted a study on university students and they show that students are not taking notice of their sleep patterns and how little they sleep to manage their deadlines and push through stressful situations.
H. Yang et al. say that burnout among students might affect their relationship with their university, increases their likelihood of becoming burnt out as professionals when they become one.
Understanding Users
To understand why students face burnout, what challenges they face and what have they done so far to tackle burnout, I conducted 5 out of the 10 user interviews.
We created an interview protocol and boiled are questions down to the following few open-ended questions:
Research Questions:
-
What is their current mental state?
-
How are they currently managing their studies and personal life?
-
Have they faced burnout before or are they currently facing it?
-
What do they think has led to burnout?
-
What symptoms they have observed?
-
What steps have they taken in order to tackle burnout?
User Insights
Based on the information collected from the user interviews and secondary literature review, we segregated the insights into 4 main categories signs and symptoms, causes, challenges, and current dealing methods.
What are users saying?
Sleep deprivation, anxiety, stress, frequent headaches, fatigue, and low productivity were common burnout symptoms reported by participants.
Students who experience academic burnout run a significant risk of carrying it into later stages of their professional lives if not treated or managed.
Participants preferred talking to strangers going through similar experiences without judgment over talking to someone close due to a lack of confidentiality, fear of taking up their time, and burdening them with their trivial issues.
Due to the pressure of completing assignments on meeting strict deadlines, students often compromise their eating and sleeping schedules, which has a negative impact on their health over time.
Competitive Analysis
We conducted a competitive analysis with different mental health digital platforms available currently, to understand the opportunities in the space and how burnout is addressed by these platforms.
_edited.jpg)
The shortcomings of these digital platforms are:
-
They all tackle mental health issues on a high level. There is no application specifically targeting burnout.
-
None of the applications offer a combination of online therapy and guided meditation.
-
There is a very low accountability factor.
-
Even after low surveys, the content of the application is not catered to the user's needs even though the applications promise customized treatment plans.
Problem Statement
How can we assist students in tackling burnout at the university level?
Brainstorming
Our team engaged in a comprehensive brainstorming session to generate a variety of ideas aimed at addressing burnout at the university level. During this process, we carefully examined various traditional therapy techniques and considered how they could be utilized in combination to maximize their effectiveness. We then proceeded to create a well-defined workflow that outlines the optimal sequence of steps for the implementation of our product.
How can we detect burnout and build a recovery process?
Validating the Idea
By asking three critical questions, we conducted expert evaluations with therapists and psychologists to validate the concept of this application.
-
Is it possible to conduct the Burnout assessment online?
-
Is it safe to share the questionnaire's results with users?
-
Will the users benefit from the combination of AI and therapist intervention?
Inisghts from concept validation
Burnout Assessments are open-source and available online for people to take without any supervision and it is safe to share the result.
1
The combination of AI-based tasks and virtual therapy can be a powerful assistive tool for therapists and psychologists to help students tackle burnout by using CBT.
2
The solution
Constraints
-
Making the solution economical.
-
Privacy concerns due to confidentiality of medical reports.
-
Availability of the therapists.
Requirements
-
Ensure users take the CBI questionnaire every two weeks.
-
Ensure that users are aware of their burnout level.
-
Ensure users complete steps every day from their recovery process.
-
Ensure users attend their weekly or biweekly meetings with therapists.
Features
-
Detecting individual burnout levels based on the user data collected during onboarding and CBI questionnaire.
-
Recovery Process - The application will recommend a list of activities the user needs to complete from CBT to help them recover from burnout.
-
Therapist Intervention - The users have to meet the therapist weekly or biweekly for one on one therapy sessions.
Wireframes
We decided to focus on three critical workflows when designing the product's MVP.
We designed our low-fidelity prototypes using Balsamiq and conducted an internal walkthrough to find loopholes and improvements in the product.
Onboarding Flow
Finishing a step from the recovery Roadmap
.png)
Attending a therapy session
.png)
Testing & Evaluation
We conducted user and expert testing with the wireframes. I tested the wireframes with 2 users and 2 experts to understand the problems with the initial wireframes and improve on the design. We identified usability and conceptual issues in the solution we crafted.
Problem Identified: In the Initial wireframe, to overcome the issue of stigma around mental therapy we decided to integrate conversational voice UI assistive technology to help users overcome the stigma and talk openly. We didn't consider the fact the users might need an alternative input method to get onboard onto the application.
Solution: To present users with both options to input data during onboarding one through the Voice UI and the other through the multiple choices available on the screen (MCQs).
Before
The user had only one input method conversational voice UI to complete the onboarding and CBI questionnaire.
After
The users have the freedom to choose which input method they are comfortable with voice UI or MCQs.
Problem Identified: For the system to recommend a therapist, the user has to enter the days and times they are available throughout the week. But with the initial visual pattern established to book appointments, it was difficult to select multiple slots.
Solution: To resolve this issue, we designed separate drop-downs where the user can select multiple days of the week and their respective timings based on their availability.
Before
The user faced difficulty in selecting multiple days and their respective times because of the layout.
After
We designed separate dropdowns for days and their respective timings, which allows the user to select multiple slots.
Problem Identified: The initial concept had functionality that allowed the users to chat with the therapist before having a formal virtual therapy session. However, after evaluating our concept with experts a question of accountability the therapist would have to respond to these messages which a lot of therapists might not be familiar with and won't encourage.
Solution: We decided to eliminate the chat functionality and introduced an SOS chat feature, where the users can chat with Clara's chatbot and connect to emergency hotlines in times of crisis.
Before
The user had the functionality to chat with therapists before the virtual therapy sessions.
After
SOS chat feature where users can talk to Clara's chatbot and connect to emergency hotline services in times of crisis.
Link to full Figma prototype
How our product performed?
We tested our product's initial MVP with expert and novice users, there were a few concerns that the users raised about the application.
Instead of the system recommending one therapist the users want more freedom to browse and then choose the one they prefer.
1
They also wanted more options to filter and sort therapist profiles based on their requirement.
2
How will the application retain users once the users are familiar with the exercises curated by the AI?
3
How will the system tackle overarching mental health disorders if detected in the users?
4
What challenges did we face?
We understand that there are limitations to our proposed design solution and it is not designed to replace traditional therapy in any form.
Therapist Availability - Because of the rise in mental health disorders and increased awareness, there is an increase in the number of people seeking online therapy.
1
The Intelligence of the AI - The AI's intelligence is as intelligent as its vocabulary, which will be trained using public data sets to avoid data privacy concerns.
2
What did I learn?
-
Conducting extensive research:
I read about 15 research papers out of the total 50 papers reviewed for this project by the team. Our research assisted me in developing strong advocacy for the product's users by understanding their pain points, goals, and frustrations, which we discovered through our primary and secondary research. The methodologies we implemented in the application to build an AI-recommended journey for the users were the main takeaway from these research papers.
-
Validating the Concept:
During the testing of our application, we discovered how important it was for us to validate the concept with our expert users, such as psychologists and therapists. We conducted think-aloud sessions with expert users to understand if the product fits the needs of both the primary and secondary user groups. One concern we had as product designers was if the product adheres to the practices of traditional therapy used by therapists and psychologists when dealing with burnout patients.
-
Project Management Strategies:
Through this project, I have acquired a set of effective strategies for managing deadlines, ensuring that all team members are diligently working on their assigned tasks, and establishing clear and open channels of communication within the team. Additionally, I have honed my ability to receive feedback in a constructive and receptive manner, avoiding defensiveness and remaining open to different perspectives and insights that can improve our team's output.
What I would do differently?
-
I would address the issue of therapists' availability in this project and how we can make therapy accessible to students. One approach would be to collaborate with the university's mental health association and onboard all therapists and psychologists on the application to address this pressing need.
-
Another issue I would address is training the AI system's intelligence through multiple rounds of usability tests to improve the recommendation system based on user needs and manage burnout in university students more efficiently and effectively.