UX Project: Breathe Easy Case Study

MY ROLE

This being a 3 month long project, it was imperative that each group member had roles to follow. These roles were set out by a Gant Chart and roles would alternate from week to week. This involved group leader, secondary research, conducting interviews, running usability tests and card sorting with our target users.

To be successful in the design it was important that we gathered as much information as possible before interviews, and therefore clarify information with our target Audience of the DSS.

CHALLENGES

This project came with a lot of challenges that we needed to overcome, these being that mental illness is a sensitive subject for some, and we needed to take caution with the questions we asked.

Another challenge was to over come the social stigma that sometimes surrounds mental illness, and encourage those who aren’t seeking help to do so.

And lastly, our main challenge was to create an outcome that DSS students would want to use and find out what sort of features they’d like it to have in order to lessen the burden of the Academic Year.

THE RESEARCH

Both Primary and secondary Research was conducted for this project. Before we could start interviewing the DSS students, we needed to understand the roles Monash University played to ensure DSS students were recieving the help they need.

After gathering this information we were able to put together a list of questions that was suitable for the task at hand. In the interview we were able to gather information such as the students pain points, their goals and motivations.

After gathering this information we then analysed it, found patterns and created personas that reflected the target audience.

THE OUTCOME

The design solution we came out with was an app called Breathe Easy, the app had three main features that needed to be covered, this was organisation, stress relief and easy ways of contacting the DSS for their services.

A Mood tracker was placed on the home page for students to track how their moods and motivations were throughout semester, encouraging them to identify when they are down and allow them to seek help at these times.

A study mode is a function that was created, this is a timer where goals are set and encourages students to get them done in that time frame. Making them plan out the process makes tasks less daunting.

A services page is also within the app, allowing quick and easy contact with the right monash service based on their need.