Healthy Head — Helping Brazilians Find Psychological Support with Telemedicine
The Dinamite team uses UX Design to bring psychologists and patients together in social distance times.
The Challenge
The task of our team was to mitigate the effects of mental health concerns for Brazilians during the pandemic using telemedicine.
How to improve Brazilians’ mental health in time of need using the opportunities provided by telemedicine?
The Current Scenario
During the 2020 pandemic, people tend to spend most of their time inside their homes to follow social distancing protocols. Concurrently, there are factors in isolation that drastically influence some Brazilians' routines, which can result in psychological disorders. This can be illustrated by examining the data released by Fiocruz (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz) in the booklet Mental Health and Psychosocial Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The new demands brought by the COVID-19 pandemic made psychological services unfeasible, it was no longer safe for either the therapist or the patient. In Brazil, before 2020, it was against the law to offer any medical assistance remotely. However, the law was changed because of social distancing protocols.
With the introduction of remote therapy, usage has been growing exponentially. According to Veja magazine, the number of online services offered by the Startup Vittude jumped from 22000 to 130000 in only four months.
However, many people are still cautious about using remote therapy. For example, some in-person patients have stopped their treatment because they felt uncomfortable not being able to properly interact with the psychologist.
Product’s Goal
Increase, by June 2021, the number of remote consultations with psychologists, doubling the number of appointments compared to the consultations conducted in the previous year. For instance, if a psychologist attended to 10 patients in person in 2020, they can now reach 20 patients remotely.
Business Model Canvas
Our business strategy was based on the Business Model Canvas tool which is a very flexible and agile tool.
Users
There are two possible users for our product and they depend on each other. The first one is the psychologist, who will consult people through the online platform. The second one is the patient, who will receive the treatment. We validated our personas with the surveys and interviews found in the research section below.
Context 1
Marina is 32 years old and had never done online consultations before the pandemic. With the arrival of the pandemic, she was lost about what to do, since she could no longer make psychological consultations in person. Now, Marina is looking for new efficient and safe ways to connect with her patients
Context 2
Luiza is 22 years old and she tries to be better each day, but she is exhausted. She is a student worried about her future. She is also going through family trouble and is feeling discouraged and anxious. Luiza wants to change her state, but she has no idea what to do, who to ask for help and how she can pay for therapy.
User Journey
First Validation Step
Our team adopted two research steps to validate the personas. The first one was a quantitative survey with a question-and-answer form (Google Forms). The second one was qualitative research, they were interviews by voice call (Google Meet).
Our team had a mix of guesswork and doubt about our personas for our research. With the form and interviews, we could validate most of our guesses and doubts. The Interviews helped validate what was missing.
Our team used the Certainties, Suppositions and Doubts Matrix (CSD) graphics and Impact x Knowledge to define our hypotheses and the impact the tools would have on our work.
Quantitative Research
Our research was done through a question form (Google Forms), where we did objective and unbiased questions that helped validate our assumptions. In the form, we got answers from 83 people (12 psychologists and 71 non-psychologists). Our team recognised the number of psychologists was not ideal for the research, but we decided to bear the risk.
The Google Form questions helped validate and invalidate some of the assumptions. We thought, for example, that the professionals had difficulties in disclosing their work. However, the survey showed us that most of them do not have this difficulty.
There were guesses harder to validate because the complexity of the answers did not fit the form’s questions. Therefore, we put an optional question at the end asking for contact information (e-mail, phone and others) for the ones who wanted to help us in an in-depth interview.
Qualitative Research
We did our interviews through Google Meet. We interviewed 9 people (2 psychologists and 7 non-psychologists). This time we asked more personal questions, such as “Why do you prefer online consultations? Point out positive points”. This question helped us to understand why people felt more comfortable having appointments without having to leave the house. With the answers we got, we realized that:
- People do consultations online, mainly because it’s more convenient;
- The majority of people who did face-to-face consultations migrated to the remote format as a result of the pandemic;
- Lack of money for consultations is common among patients;
- It is common for psychologists to make consultations free of charge.
Solution Alternatives
Our team thought of several solutions, and, of course, we could not go on with all of them considering the time it would take. Therefore, we needed to prioritize our ideas so we could accomplish what would be most compatible with our planning. For this, we used an Impact Effort Matrix. Our team did not disregard the other ideas, they would just be held for future improvements.
We considered that high impact was what we should prioritize as it would make a big difference in the final product, as:
- We are proposing an easy and intuitive platform;
- We are making simple and inexpensive features that generate impact to capture the target audience;
- Our target audience is psychologists and non-psychologists of all ages, which increases financial performance.
The Solution
Our team concluded that the ideal solution would be a mobile platform where psychologists and patients would have a space for consultations, a chat for eventual conversations, some spaces for the psychologist where they could accept or decline inquiries, and other specific spaces for the patient, such as the available hours of a particular psychologist.
First Usability Testing
Our team first drew a prototype on paper, then we did a simple navigation in a mobile app (Marvel). From that, we did our first usability test with eight people. We asked for some simple and direct tasks:
- Log in;
- Schedule an appointment with a psychologist;
You can check out the first navigation prototype by clicking here!
With the results in hand, we made some changes on paper and again applied usability tests. The new tests proved that the changes made improved user navigation. These are our final prototypes for the application:
Wireframe
With the prototype finished, our team proceeded to build our application. We started making the wire frame following the drawings we had made on paper as an example. This is the finished wireframe:
Visual Benchmark
Now that we have the solution and functionality we were going to implement tested, we turn to benchmarking to make our UI decisions. Our decisions were directly impacted by the results found from the benchmark analysis.
You can find the complete benchmark by clicking here (Portuguese).
UX Writing
We were also careful with the tone of voice and the words we would use in the app, as we addressed a subject as sensitive as mental health.
Style Guide
The style guide has a simple, objective and practical design so that any person can understand. The colors are pleasant to the eyes and they convey good feelings.
Colors
According to studies, blue is the preferred color worldwide. The color blue helps people feel calmer and more focused, in addition to being associated with friendliness, harmony and fidelity.
Typography
Open Sans is a sans-serif font family and it is known for its excellent readability. Google describes the font as “modern, but friendly” and “humanist”. The full font family is officially available to download free on websites such as Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts.
Buttons
Experts claim that rectangles with rounded corners are better than the ones with sharp corners since they ask for less cognitive effort and visual processing. The circular image is processed quickly, so that is why we chose buttons with rounded corners.
Input Components
High-fidelity Prototype
Based on the wireframe and the style guide, our team created a high-fidelity prototype as well as the user flow. Why don’t you try scheduling an appointment with Marina?
