Duration
June - August 2022 (10 weeks)
Role
Sole Designer
Mentor
Neil Torrefiel, CEO & Founder
Summer Design Studio
This project has a special place in my heart as I applied my design skills to approach an issue I deeply care about - Mental Health especially when it relates to adolescents. The challenge was to craft an experience that delivers personalized care in the most efficient way. Within a duration of 8 weeks, I thoroughly researched thoughtfully strategized & prototyped Circles, a digital experience that simplifies how students connect with peers & counselors on high school & college campuses.
This is personal
My own journey with mental health started in 2017 during my second year of University in Mumbai. When I first experienced my mental wellness declining, At the time, I was scared to bring up how poor my mental state was because I didn’t want anyone to worry about me. There were no counseling services or any kind of support on campus for me or anyone like me to access.
It is tough being a teenager today.
Parents expect support at home; siblings demand attention; teachers insist on excellence; friends want constant online engagement—amassed, these expectations can overwhelm anyone.
Today I am in the U.S. which is home to some of the finest universities in the world, providing top-notch education, but when it comes to taking care of the mental health needs of the students, they are lagging behind.
I focused my research on teenagers in colleges because,
The colleges are struggling to meet the surging demand for mental health services on campus, and some schools are wrestling with how much care they owe students. Students often have to wait weeks to get their first appointment.
A three-week wait for care with a broken finger would never be acceptable.
Inside the college mental health crisis
Mental Health is a heavy topic, it was important to conduct well-rounded & extensive research to understand the ecosystem, the stakeholders and various factors that prevent the colleges to deliver the best care possible. Research activities included:
Immersion Exercise: I tried to book a counseling session at my college here at CCA. I did not see any appointments for the next 2 and a half weeks. There was a crisis number but it was only for someone in an emergency need.
Secondary Research: I reviewed a 20+ articles, webinars & white papers to understand different models of care.
Primary Research: I also interviewed 3 experts who lead organizations like Unmasked, Lyra health & CAMH to understand their approach to delivering care.
Distilling every observation & information into 3 key insights.
I also tried analyzing the tools of 20+ peers to understand what they're doing in this space & how they deliver personalized care. I struggled to find any tool built for students in the campus environment.
Maybe there is an opportunity to design an experience catered for high schools and colleges.
Need for an efficient model for delivering care
I had my insights but still didn’t know how to put them together to offer a unique value prop.
I did not want to design another boring, generic experience which tracks your mood or asks you to meditate.
That’s when I stumbled upon this webinar. It spoke about a new approach ~ the Triage model which efficiently provides an intervention to a student in distress based on the risk assessed. This means that it prioritizes care delivery to those students who need it most urgently. I also found that very few attempts had been made to implement triage digitally.
Backed with my other findings, it all started coming together.
But I am not a psychologist or a counselor.
I tried my best to understand what entails different risk profiles & designed a model for an average size university. I also reached out to the host of that webinar Dr Debbie Chiodo to validate my assumptions & refine my draft model.
A college student receives care in circles
First is the circle of our friends & family who are our closest support system, second comes the circle of peers, teachers & care providers at college & third is the circle which consists of the broader campus community. There was a need to close the gap between self & last two circles. Hence I designed Circles following the same analogy.
While building the information architecture of the app, I was mindful to provide multiple options for engagement.
Students have the freedom to decide if they want to seek counseling by calling or visiting the office, socialise by voluntarily joining a peer support group & attending events or stay alone and consume resources from a curated library.
How does Circles work?
The first touch-point for any student experiencing distress is either a call to the counseling services or a walk in to the office. If they choose the former, it's important to make the sessions tab easier to access & reassuring to read when they try to book a session.
Let’s take an example. Nancy is a first-year Art major at UC Berkeley. Just a few weeks before the end of the semester, everything seems to be falling apart for. She just got out of a relationship and is emotionally drained.
Nancy is experiencing thoughts of self-harm.
She gets on the app & calls the counseling services where a trained professional performs a rapid risk assessment. Because there is a possible threat to her life, she is internally labeled as HIGH risk.
According to the model, she has to be provided individual support within 24-72 hours, hence after the call she can schedule a call with her chosen counselor.
Along with designing for a personalized post-call intervention, I redefined the experience of choosing a counselor.
A walkthrough of Nancy's post-call experience of booking a counselor on Circles.
According to the triage model, the experience will be different for a student who is assessed as medium risk. The student shall receive counselor support in 7-10 days & will be referred to a peer support group.
Besides making mental health services more personalized & flexible, Circles can be leveraged in a few different ways to provide value to students & encourage help-seeking behavior.
Changing the journey of a student in distress
In the traditional model, the information about care was scattered, and sessions are given on a first come first serve basis without assessing for symptoms which made the wait time for someone in moderate to urgent need unusually high.
The new model changes that journey to a major extent by extending care to those students first, who need it the most while providing alternative interventions to the rest.
If Circles ships today...
If Circles goes live today at any campus, here are the key signals I will track closely to know if it is truly driving the intended change in behavior of students & breaking traditional barriers:
Increase in the number of calls & walk-ins to counseling services than usual.
Decrease in average wait time for 1:1 sessions with the preferred counselor
Higher engagement in peer support groups & Rise in turnout at events
Scaling for Impact
It’s safe to assume that not every university & high school has the same resources. Some might have limited counselors available, some might have only crisis care & off-campus referrals & some might have tight budgets. Circles can be tailored as per each university’s resources, staff, and number of students.
If given more time & resources...
I’d like to build upon this concept by
Designing the provider experience will be used on the other end to assess risk.
Leveraging Circles as a singular touch point for all services - primary care, mental health
care & academic support.Co-creating with high school & college students for the next iteration.
