Background

This project was our team's submission to Rice University's 2024 Designathon, an asynchronous design challenge held over the course of three days. The prompt given was to design a digital application that addressed a challenge that undergraduate students faced.

How did I add value?

Considering that we were crunched for time, I took on the role of design lead; guiding my team through design sprints and ensuring that we met regular project milestones in order to keep on track throughout the duration of the competition. I also created the interview framework and surveys we used to conduct user research, sketched out the preliminary designs, and designed the landing page and counselor page portions of the prototype.

Problem

Poor mental health is an ongoing epidemic at American college campuses.

A 2021-2022 survey of students across 133 American college campuses found that 44% of students reported symptoms; however, less than 25% of those students actually sought help. With their personal health, academic performance, and a slew of many other things at stake, college students need a way to better support their mental health.

Research

To get a better grasp of the issue at hand, we conducted a total of 4 informational interviews.

Our goals for the interviews was to gather deeper insights on students’ emotional well-being and utilization of university mental health resources. The questions we asked ranged from pinpointing specific stressors to coping strategies in order to better understand students’ attitudes towards these subjects.

After a thorough analysis of the responses, we took note of our major insights and boiled everything down into the following takeaways:

In addition to the interviews, we also conducted a survey to gather more information on students' specific pain points.

In total, we received over 30 survey responses from across 10 different universities in the U.S. The results helped qualify the previous interview takeaways with quantitative data.

Some of the biggest quantitative takeaways from the survey data were:

Based upon our research insights, we set three design goals to help address this question.

Solution

Thrive is a healthcare tool geared towards increasing accessibility to professional, affordable help and fostering community amongst struggling college students.

Get personally matched to counselors available near you.

Or match with counselors to start talking.

Manage your chats with counselors, peers (otherwise known as buds), and Thrive's chatbot for 24/7 immediate help.

Find community and build a support network with fellow buds.

Process

First, I held a design sprint within our team to quickly brainstorm potential solutions to the aforementioned barriers.

Afterwards, we voted on our favorites and proceeded with those features in the next steps.

After voting on Thrive’s core features, we mapped out the information architecture of the app.

Using the information architecture as guidance, we sketched out several frames to get a feel of the general user flow.

This helped us determine what interaction models we wanted to use and identify any noticeable areas that needed improvement.

From there, some low-fidelity wireframes.

Several additional changes were made as we progressed to higher fidelity.

Visual Design

From there, the design system.

For typography, we chose DM Sans because of its easy readability at all sizes, but also for its both modern and playful feel.

For the color scheme, we chose green as the primary brand color since it aligned with our natural, plant-centered theme of “growing together.” Additionally, green is traditionally used to evoke calm, which was necessary in order to achieve the relaxing and inviting atmosphere in our UI design.

Takeaways

1. Teamwork makes the dream work

This was our first designathon for all of us, so figuring out how to step our foot down on decisions in order to finish in time was a struggle, especially in the beginning ideation stages. However, by banding together and pushing forward, we were able to overcome every issue that arose.

2. Divide and conquer

Delegating tasks while working simultaneously allowed us to progress quickly under a time crunch. This is definitely a valuable tip that I intend on employing in future team design projects whether I am leading or just designing!