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Overview

Mental health is an important attribute in our lives. 1 in 5 Australians experience mental illness each year.

Thats around two and a half million people not getting the help they need and young people between 16-27 years represent the largest demographic.

Currently there is no specific medium catered to finding the appropriate psychologist for the client. Most go through word of mouth or GP recommendations which often leads to patients visiting multiple doctors before finding the right one.

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The Challenge

Our client APS is the largest association in Australia for professional psychologists. They mainly cater towards the needs of their members by promoting psychology and its positive impact.

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Our goal was to increase user engagement for the site.

Team
Tools
Roles
Dominique
Dinesh
Sneha
Sketch
Axure
Invision
Google Forms
Keynote
User Research, Competitor Analysis
User flow, User Journey, Information Architecture, Ideation, Usability Testing
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Timeline 
 2 weeks

Australian Psychological Society

On site observations

Our primary action was observing the APS website and its content. We have noticed that there is a lot of information for the members but when it came to users, it was not a straight away approach to search for the psychologists. It was laid out in the “For the public’ section towards the corner without being highlighted or one needs to browse to the middle of the main page and highlight it.

User Interviews

To get a deeper analysis into the subject of mental health, we started interviewing various clients of psychologists ,patients, counsellors and social workers. Our observations lead us towards discovering the problems faced by patients, how they would approach a psychologist and the barriers involved in the procedure.

To identify the core problem in the process of patients finding a psychologist, I have interviewed 8 clients of psychologists , 7 doctors and two hospital HR managers.

Affinity Mapping

To gather collaborative data from the information we collected through interviews, we have done the affinity mapping to re arrange the data in common patterns such as COST, IMPORTANT, NOT REQUIRED, PREFERENCES, RECOMMENDED and OTHER.

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Key Pain Points

  • Word of mouth or GP recommendations are not always reliable

  • Often patient needs to see multiple psych's before finding the 'right one’ who has got traitsof being friendly and empathetic.

  • Stigma around  seeking help for mental health issues

  • negative first experience can lead to discontinuation of their treatment

  • location and time are important

Survey

We have conducted surveys structured around our key insights:

  • personality of the psychologist

  • need for bulk billing

  • understanding types of therapy

  • importance of  seeing psychologists image

So the key criteria was  “Finding the Right Fit” and “Understanding Types of Therapy”

Competitive Analysis

We wanted to know the other competitors in this space. So I conducted this analysis to see how they were engaging with their usability.

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 User needs          vs       Usability Issues
The Solution

 Platform for Patients to Connect with Psychologists

 

We believe that by creating such a platform we will allow patients to make more informed decisions when seeking help thus reducing the amount of time a patient spends finding the right psychologist. We would enhance the ‘For The Public’ section of the site to make it easier for clients to find psychologists.

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The goal is to enhance the already existing search database of APS in helping patients find the the right psychologist in the least possible time.

Journey Map

To perceive the way the user interacts with our solution, we designed the user journey map to highlight the touchpoints of every interaction and the emotions the users undergo throughout the process.

 

It would help us know what goes through the mind of the users and their behaviour from the moment they would start looking for help, navigate looking for a psychologist and the process of finding one and going through the booking process.

Initially the clients would wonder where to go for help and then they would research online or see a GP.Since it is the first step they are taking in approaching professional help, they would be stressed,worried or confused.

Once they start browsing the site wondering the about cost and time, they would be feeling anxious and would be reviewing the profiles of psychologists.

Then they will most likely select a psychologist who would suit their prefrences and try to contact them.At this stage they would feel like being a stepcloser to getting help while anticipating if the doctor would be the right one for them.

 

once the session with a psychologist is finished, depending upon their experience they would feel happy or upset that they wasted all their time and money.

The  most common issues while searching for a psychologist were :

  •  finding the right one

  • the time it would take to get consultation

  • location

  • a positive experience could make them feel relieved and go ahead for a consultation after choosing a preferable time

  • negative experience would dissapoint them and and most likely go back to a GP.

After understanding and gaining an empathetic view of the users, our research has made us indentify our three personas that represent the key users of the APS website.

 

Our average user is someone who is looking to finding the right help in the least possible time. Also, the personality of the psychologist would play a deciding factor in users seeking their assistance.

 

key quotes:

 “My busy schedule makes it tough to get time to see a psychologist”

 

“my previous experience was bad since I could not connect to the psychologist to express my issues”

IInformation Architecture
UserFlow

We designed the userflow to depict how a typical user would go through the process of finding a suitable psychologist on the APS website. The userflow determines each of the individual actions taken throughout the process of searching for a psychologist to booking an appointment with them. It helps us in framing the user flow and the decision making process at each juncture.

This step by step process leads us to users goal. I designed it after gaining an insight into the various personas of our users.

Design

We needed to redesign the Find A Psychologist section of the APS website to ensure it has as much relevant information a person needs to find the help they’re looking for.

 

Given that young people represent the largest age group of those experiencing a mental health issue, and that 9 in 10 Australian teens now have a mobile phone, we decided to start with a mobile first approach to direct our first solution to the younger, more mobile oriented demographic.

Paper Prototype

Our paper prototype consisted of a rough home screen through which we would land into the search function and then select the psychologist based on our criteria.

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For any  immediate assistance, I have come up with the chat helpline guided by experts.

Prototype - 1st Digital Iteration

Our first digital iteration was carried out based on the structure of our paper prototype.

Prototype-2nd Digital Iteration

But the usability testing made us identify the gaps in our design.

  • Move away from the current formal/clinical brand to a warm/calmer feeling website.

  • Change EXPERTISE to ISSUE

  • So many issues to choose from! Add common issues to top of the collapsible box.

  • Search button was hard to identify as a button

  • Minor indentations for sub headings

 

Hence we made another new design to fix the above issues.

We slightly altered the layout and tone and since more than 50% found info on therapy approach important, we added that into the search parameter.

We also added info page to explain the various types of therapy that psychologists offer, to the search criteria.

we would be able to view a psychologists available times and book a session that suits us.

This will also help us to measure the performance of the new ‘Find A Psychologist’ website.

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We added  ‘about me’ to psychologist profile

To address the most important issue regarding the personality of the psychologist,

we included client testimonials to help a person decide who is right for them.

Overall we designed a simple online booking process that would not store confidential info of the users.

Next Steps

We conducted more usability testing to gain more feedback.

 

Future designs

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  • Create self help tools to educate the users in what to look for a psychologist

  • Design the desktop version

  • Raise mental health awareness by forming partnerships with black dog ,beyond blue and other mental health advocate groups in Australia.

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