UX/UI Design
MyESS
Connecting young Canadians to mental health services available through their workplace benefits
Our team competed in uXperience Design Jam hosted by the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, sponsored by Sun Life. We were challenged to design high-fidelity screens and to prepare a product pitch in 13 hours. Out of 20 teams from universities all over Ontario, we placed 1st overall. As winners, we will also present our product idea to the leadership teams at Sun Life in 2023.
OVERVIEW
THE CHALLENGE
Create an empathetic, inclusive solution that helps young Canadians open-up about their mental health needs. It should connect them with treatment options and services and empower them to take care of their mental health.
OUR SOLUTION
My Emotional Support System (ESS) is a centralized mobile app focused on preventative strategies and reinforcing measures to prioritize mental health. Our solution connects employees covered by SunLife Insurance with resources to take care of their emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
ROLE
Conducted User Research
Persona Development
UI Design Prototyper
Journey Map Development
Presenter
COLLABORATORS
Amy Li
Dani DeJong
Christy Chan
Helen Chan
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Miro
TIMELINE
13 hours (November 12, 2022)
Young Canadians are feeling financial uncertainty more acutely than other groups. The housing market, inflation, and concerns about a potential recession are top of mind. This has inspired organizations to address workplace mental health, but Young Canadians are not always comfortable talking about these issues or taking advantage of the resources available.
RESEARCH
Background Research
According to Sun Life,
Although young Canadians see mental health services as a vital aspect of workplace benefits plans, navigating feelings of stress and anxiety is a daunting task, and they do not know where to start.
Primary Research
Our team wanted to develop a more in-depth understanding of people's attitudes toward mental health and their experiences taking care of their emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Given the time constraints, we did this by sending out a questionnaire to collect personal opinions and attitudes from Gen Z’s and millennials.
From our 62 respondents, we found that
When asked how they take care of their mental health, respondents said,
“I don't do much. I try to engage in hobbies I enjoy.”
“I ignore it and hangout with friends.”
“I don’t, I’m generally losing that battle.”
ANALYSIS
Our Persona: Hannah the Heartbroken
Hannah’s recent split from her partner is taking a toll on her mental health and her ability to perform well at work. After losing her main support system, Hannah’s main goal is to navigate mental health services covered by her benefits package.
Current Journey Map
After developing our persona, we created a journey map for Hannah to illustrate how her current stressors impact the quality of her personal and work life.
After following Hannah’s current journey, we were able to identify her needs:
IDEATION
Low-Fidelity Sketches
After combining the design solutions based on impact and feasibility, we created My Emotional Support System (MyESS).
MyESS is mobile app focused on preventative strategies and the reinforcement of measures to prioritize mental health by centralizing Sun Life’s resources and events, and sending periodic check-ins to encourage employees to use their benefits. Our team created low-fidelity prototypes that showcase our major design features.
Here are the three key features that address the challenge statement:
Ideal Journey Map
With these key features in mind, our team mapped an ideal journey of the same scenario where the design solution addresses Hannah’s major pain points.
EVALUATION
Coaching Session with UX Team from Sun Life
As offered by the Design Jam, our team had the opportunity to pitch our first round of design solutions to senior UX designers, researchers and writers from Sun Life. Here’s the key feedback from the meeting:
Use storytelling to show the importance of introducing employees to their workplace benefits plan during onboarding
Consider how we can support the mental health journey past the onboarding phase in our next steps
Given the time constraints, narrow down our ideas and present the key user flows
Making Changes and Refining User Flows
Our team used the feedback from our coaching session to inform our design decisions moving forward. With their insights, we made finalized our user flows.
FINAL DESIGNS
High Fidelity Prototype
Finally, our team created a high fidelity clickable prototype based on the feedback from the UX Team at Sun Life.
ONBOARDING
Introducing our value proposition
These onboarding screens reveal the goals of MyESS: embedding preventative mental health care in the workplace, prioritizing the well-being of all employees, and protecting personal information.
We want to make it clear that Hannah’s company cares about her as a person, not just an employee.
FIND SUPPORT
Centralizing important resources
Sun Life’s mental health services and resources are listed all in one place in plain, digestible wording.
Managing emotions of sadness, stress and anxiety is a difficult task. We want to make sure that Hannah can access the right tools quickly and easily.
CHECK-IN
Assessing how you feel
Mental health is an ongoing journey, not a destination. It’s something one continually has to work on, nurture and manage.
Mental health check-ins are sent periodically to remind Hannah about Sun Life’s resources and encourage her to use her benefits.
NEXT STEPS
The Future of MyESS
In the future, we hope to scale up our app by adding three additional pieces:
As first-place winners, our team will also move forward with presenting MyESS to the leadership teams at Sun Life in 2023.
REFLECTION
My Personal Takeaways
Prioritizing Mental Health
During the design jam, a health and wellness representative visited each team to practice breathing exercises. After feeling refocused, I realized that prioritizing mental health not only creates an environment where team members feel safe and supported, but enables everyone to perform at their best.
Diverse Work Styles
For most of us, it was the first time working with each other. To include different work styles, we facilitated an inclusive work environment that leveraged everyone's strengths and provided a platform for each voice to be heard.
Working Efficiently
As our team had limited time, we had to devise a strategy to complete project requirements quickly without sacrificing quality. Our team did this by splitting into smaller groups to do different tasks and coming together at the end to cross-check everyone's work.