Using Design Thinking to solve Mental Health Problem
Introduction
As part of our Hackathon, I and three other fellows from FutureFounder, a training program to help innovative students develop critical thinking, leadership, and strategic analysis, did a brainstorming session, to develop an idea to solve the mental health problem in the pandemic. A hackathon is basically trying to solve a real-world problem with technology. We use Design Thinking, which is an iterative process to redefine problems and create solutions. After more than a year of living with COVID-19, we realized that the number of people with mental health problems was growing. Based on our research, anxiety, depression, and stress were the most common problems among college students.
The problem
We developed a solution for these students. An App to help them schedule appointments with a therapist, or just relax with meditation and social interaction with those who understand their pain.
The product
To create our project we went step by step into Design Thinking:
Empathize- Our team made a research to narrow down the group of people with mental health problems, and we find that university students were one of the most affected by these issues during the pandemic. In order to clarify that and gather more information about our persona, we create an online interview, with questions about mental health before and during the pandemic. We have had more than 80 answers, which we based to create our solution.
Define- Defining our problem statement was not so easy. We had to narrow down our problem until we found the right person to target. Once we did that, we could better define our statement and it is clear what problem we are trying to solve and for who is our app. Reviewing the answers on our interview, we had clear our persona, it is a university student, between 18-21 years old, perhaps struggling to pay his bill, showed some anxiety feeling before pandemic but it was raised during the pandemic.
Ideate- On our brainstorming section in our team, each of us developed at least one idea. We had six ideas to choose from or just integrate into one. We analyzed the needs of our persona and we were able to select the idea that best suited the solution to our problem.
Prototype- After we chose the best idea, we start to build our prototype according to our persona. For example, the idea was in the first place, a physical robot, but based on our research we understood that our persona does not have so much time, and needs something easy to use daily. So, our prototype changed to an app.
Test- We decided to show to at least eight personas, in person or by video call, how MOM was going to work because in that way we could make sure that our app is really solving their problems. We had some valuable feedback that we integrate into our project.
FutureFounder Demo Day
Competitive Analysis
After all this process, we had our Demo Day. With Sam Magee, from the Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Creativity at Harvard, being one of the judges, we made our pitch to showcase our MOM project. They not only gave us points about our presentation, but they also gave us great feedback and tips to improve our app. This was an amazing opportunity to hone our entrepreneurial skills.
Key Takeaways
Solving a problem is not easy. Even more when we talk about health, environment, etc. If you're trying to find a solution, you need to make sure you understand your persona and their needs. Once you understand this, the steps you need to follow will become clear. So keep Design Thinking in mind and if you need to, you can always go back to the first step (Empathize) and refresh your mind again.
Thank you for reading this post.
Diana