View the prototype of LifeLately here.

INTRODUCTION:

Tasked by IBM stakeholders within the first cohort of an Applied Experience Design course at UTDallas, I led a cross-functional team of 5 throughout the end-to-end process to conceptualize and design an AI-powered application to meet the demand for mental health and wellness services. The primary goals of this application are to help students feel more confident in managing their mental health independently, foster healthier coping strategies, and ultimately improve their overall well-being.

Team Members: Cameron Sigua (Lead Researcher), Jade Nguyen (Prototype Developer), Chloe Chu (Lead Designer), Faith Romero (Assistant Designer)

THE PROBLEM:

Mental health and wellness is a pressing issue for college students which has increased in recent years with 60% of students struggling with mental illnesses.

When college students face difficulties in self-regulating their emotional well-being and adopting healthy coping mechanisms, they seek a convenient and accessible solution that enables them to effectively manage their emotions, track their mental health progress, and connect with a supportive community.

THE SOLUTION:

LifeLately leverages cutting-edge Natural Language Processing AI via IBM Watsonx, to allow users to engage in therapeutic self-help activities given the obstacles hindering them from seeking other outlets such as professional therapy, confiding in their support system, and their reluctance to do so.

By journaling and tracking emotional progress, users can have an outlet for emotional expression, enhance self-awareness, and reduce stress/anxiety. Supplemented with AI Insights and weekly advice, LifeLately is the perfect solution to manage mental health and encourage problem-solving.

Features:

After a series of guided ideation sessions, our team decided that the most integral features to pinpoint to make our product efficient, effective, and satisfying are:

• Journaling

• Self-regulation

• Emotional management

All of which will be super-powered by the integration of gamification elements, personalization, and the supplemental enhancements of artificial intelligence through informed recommendations.

View the prototype of LifeLately here.

SUCCESS MEASUREMENT:

To determine the success post-launch of our app, we’ve broken down key performance indicators into 2 categories: the user and the business.

• Engagement + Adoption: Tracking the engagement and adoption rates of essential features would help us confirm product market fit.

• User satisfaction: This can be measured through in-app surveys and app store ratings to determine the Net Promoter Score (NPS), the likelihood of user recommending to friends.

• Revenue: We would also measure the financial success of the app, including overall net revenue and profits.

• Retention: These metrics are crucial for IBM to assess if there is sustained value over time.

• Platform performance: To ensure LifeLately. is stable and responsive because this helps to maintain brand reputation and trust.
  
  

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS:

Additional features

• Advanced AI capabilities would include the ability to change the tone, dialect, and language of the AI insights and advice. Also, we would implement increased safety barriers to inform our AI for crisis responses such as if a user were to submit an entry that stated they wanted to harm themselves.

• Community features were important to our users to connect with others for support. We held off on this based on concerns for proper moderation, so in the future, we have considered community forums and chat spaces.

• Health monitoring wearables devices would leverage biometric information about sleep and heart rate to better inform our AI to provide insights to users.

Monetization opportunities

• Tiered subscriptions and in-app purchases if we offered therapy booking services or mental wellness content for purchase such as podcasts or exclusive articles.

• Corporate sponsorship with schools and organizations where our app could be offered free or at a discounted price to college students would present itself as a great means for increasing profits