TRIBE | An-Anti Planner App for Mental Health
Tribe is a goal-focused anti-planner app for university students who want to make a balance between self, school and social goals in daily life by achieving micro-goals and discovering self-emotions.
Scope
Mobile App Design
Role
Senior UX/UI Designer
Client
TRIBE, UK
Year
2023-2024
Overview
How might we design a mobile app for university students to support them in achieving balance across life areas for mental health recovery?
As a Senior UX/UI Designer, I was approached by Tribe, a startup in London, UK, to design a mobile app for university students. The challenge was to create an application that would support students in achieving balance across various life areas and aid in mental health recovery.
Problem
Through initial discussions with Tribe and my research, I identified a critical issue facing university students:
Problem Statement
University students struggle to balance their academic workload, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments, leading to increased mental health challenges.
Key statistics that informed our approach included:
Mental health challenges among UK university students have nearly tripled. | Student Mental Health in 2023
One in five children and young people had a probable mental disorder in 2023. | Mental Health of Children and Young People in England by NHS England, 2023
These findings highlighted the urgent need for an effective solution to help students manage their time and mental well-being.
Process
Human-Centered Design Approach
To address Tribe's requirements, I implemented a human-centered design process. This began with creating user journeys and personas to understand the target audience deeply.
Empathising with Users
I developed a persona named Omar, representing the typical user Tribe aimed to help.
Through Omar's story, I identified key pain points:
Lack of time for personal tasks due to academic pressures
Difficulty in creating and adhering to simple plans
Absence of a comprehensive system to track different life aspects
Reframing the Problem
Based on these insights, I proposed a hypothesis to Tribe:
Hypothesis Statement
If university students have a user-friendly mobile app that helps them effectively plan and integrate their academic and personal schedules, then they will experience reduced stress levels and improved overall well-being.
Design Process / Deliverables
My design process included several key steps:
User flow creation
Information architecture development
Competitive audit
Paper wireframes
Low-fidelity prototype
UX research study
High-fidelity designs
High-fidelity prototype
You can view the detailed process outputs below in "Solutions" section. 👇
UX Research Study
I conducted a comprehensive UX research study using an unmoderated usability test with an interactive prototype. Participants completed 8 different tasks, and I categorised the feedback into 12 patterns, which informed subsequent design iterations
Solutions
Tribe is a goal-focused anti-planner app for those who want to make a balance between self, school and social goals in daily life by achieving micro-goals and discovering self-emotions.
Based on the research and Tribe's requirements, I designed several key features:
Life Balance Score™
Provides users with a holistic view of their life balance based on emotional feedback and goals.
Academy
Offers strategies and guidelines to enhance app efficiency.
Calendar View
Allows users to track self-defined micro-goals on daily, weekly, and monthly bases.
SMART Goal Creation
Helps users set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals within the app.
Results
The iterative design process led to significant improvements in the app's usability and functionality.
Key changes included:
Improved proximity of sign-up and sign-in fields
Enhanced goal hierarchy
Integrated mood score feature
Clearer article organisation
Simplified Life Balance Score presentation
Updated component library
I provided Tribe with detailed documentation of all research results and design components for their development team. Currently, I'm supporting Tribe with ongoing usability studies to ensure all functions work successfully as they seek Seed Fund or Angel Investor support for their MVP.
The project reinforced the importance of user-centered design, with the UX Research Study leading to substantial changes in almost all screens. It also highlighted the extent of mental health issues among university students, revealing opportunities for more applications focused on this critical area.
In conclusion, the Tribe app showcases how thoughtful UX/UI design can address critical issues in student life, potentially leading to improved mental health outcomes and better life balance for university students.
