Design Process

Empathize

Before this step, I have defined my thesis scope and decided to help my end users — the Social Anxiety Sufferers, to ease public discomfort.

Secondary Research

To understand my users, I have done some secondary research, to understand the impact of social anxiety to a person’s daily life, the root causes of social anxiety, the symptoms of panic attacks, and the existing therapy.

Primary Research

Regardless the abundant information gathered from the secondary research, it is always good to conduct primary research to validate the needs and struggles with real users. 
However, despite some interviewees I have known in real life, it is interesting that most people I contacted through surveying refused to do a further interview with me ( which is understandable since they are going through social anxiety struggles!)
Therefore, I decided to take an observational approach in social anxiety support groups on Facebook and Reddit.
The primary research uncovers insights of how their daily lives looks like, their behavior during and after a panic attack, and their attitude towards finding help. 

Define

Research Synthesis

Making empathy maps helped synthesize the data into meaningful patterns. The inputs are from three user's journeys:
1. Morgan's experience of grocery shopping in rush hour (blue)
2. Andy's experience in his day to day life with her colleague (green)
3. Sally's experience of attending to the orientation (white)
From there I summarize the user's goals and pain points. This is important to define the needs and the design direction that can make a real impact.

* In psychology, thoughts that brings a surge of negative feelings are define as “Hot Thoughts”. However, it is often that the hot thought is based on biased or inaccurate information which can be totally misleading.

Ideate

At the stage of ideations, I have narrowed down my design strategy with four approaches: distraction, mindset training,  empathy awareness, and verbal practice. I tested out three ideations by posting posters in public areas, facilitating a small workshop to observe their reaction, and having a few volunteer to participate in the experiment.

However, I realized that, ideations with distraction and empathy awareness are generally comforting the users. Whereas, mindset training and verbal practice are nudging the users' behavior.
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After receiving feedback from other designers and participants, I decided to proceed with ideation 3 - Which I have pivoted my design direction to make users feel comfortable receiving authentic therapy, and to simplify the overwhelming thoughts by practicing mindset training.
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The third ideation combines the therapeutic technique of keeping an “thought diary” and the "talking therapy". These are common practices the therapists used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
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To back up my ideas, I have interviewed the professionals in the psychology field to further check the authentic therapy process. “It is very valuable to help my patients keep a thought diary, it could help them find out the thought patterns.” — Robyn Shaw (Manager and social worker in HWC)

Wireframe

Based on the in person talking therapy procedure, and the guideline for thought diary to filter out false hot thoughts and stop the destructive thought patterns, I have created a user flow to layout the user's movement and map out the possible steps through the task sequence and decision points to pursue their goals.
With the task flows sketched out, I explored to see what the interface looks like under different scenario, and finally made a wireframe with key functions defined.

Prototype

For the branding, I decided to use yellow as the theme color. However, most people would think that health related apps should use more subtle colors like blue or green according to color psychology. While these cooler colors bring more calmness to the audience, they can also portray the app as therapeutic.
According to my research, users with social anxiety would rather not be identified as patients, so being seen using a therapeutic app would not be ideal.

As a result, I decided to use warm and vibrant colors along with pop art style to presented the app as fun and non-therapeutic.

Final Result

Harmonize is an innovative solution for easing social anxiety discomfort. It aims to positively nudges the user’s thinking pattern by optimizing the experience of keeping a thought journal. 
For full version please take a look at my process book

Takeaway

Harmonized, as my firstly debuted UIUX project, was a challenging yet rewarding project for me.
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It was challenging because I did not have enough user samples to build a more inclusive solution — although I have been observing my target audience in some social groups, took some interviews with the professionals, and did the research. I learned that it would be easier if I narrowed it down to a smaller focus group when I define the scope.
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The final product was based on user experience and I'm glad I managed to implement this meaningful product. After the graduation show there were people who had the same experience sharing their feedback about the social anxiety they experienced, and they really appreciated the project and wanted to try it out.
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This project also gave me a chance to learn more about UIUX and have an idea of the skills I need to acquire later on in my career path.