Yibi

Mental Health App & Chatbot

Duration: October - December 2021

Role: Research, Concept Generation, Storyboarding

Yibi is a mental health and wellbeing app that connects college students with mental health resources on their campus, helps them navigate mental health crises, and offers coping strategy management and tracking. With Yibi, users can more easily navigate the complex mental health systems on their campuses and find care that's personalized to their needs.

Problems:

Mental health resources at the University of Michigan are difficult to find.
Students don't know where to go when they need help with their mental health.
College students struggle to make time to care for their mental health
Many don't seek help until they are already in crisis
It's difficult to find immediate help during a crisis

Goals:

Connect students with effective mental health resources at the University of Michigan
Help students find and manage coping strategies
Help students manage crisis situations
Provide a personalized experience by recommending resources that correlate with each user's unique needs

Research

Interviews and Survey

7 interviews conducted
38 survey responses received
Participants: College students at the University of Michigan

We inquired about which on-campus mental health resources people use, how they find them, how satisfied they are with the services, and how they think those services could be improved. We also asked people about their general thoughts and reservations about chatbots.

Competitive Analysis

We analyzed the following services: wellness and mental health apps, AI therapists, live therapists, Psychology Today, and crisis text lines.

Our goal was to understand what these services typically offer their customers and, consequently, which gaps Yibi could fill. We identified 2 primary pain points. Firstly, many services are not very personalized or customizable. Secondly, these services aren’t well-integrated, making it difficult or impossible to navigate many resources from one primary location.

Literature Analysis

We read up about mental health on college campuses, including: mental health rates on college campuses, how American colleges are addressing students’ mental health struggles, what needs improvement, and which improvements have been suggested and/or implemented.

Key Findings

On-campus mental health resources are hard to find and most students don't know what help is available to them

Even when students do find a list of campus resources, they don't know how to decide which are the best fit for them
Students find it difficult to manage multiple facets of their mental health care
1/3 of survey respondents say they don't seek help until they're already in crisis
Students have trouble finding immediate care during a crisis

Concept Generation

2.

1.

Using affinity mapping, we identified 5 categories of user needs:

Direct students to resources
Personalized care
Consistent and long-term benefits
Find and manage coping skills
Confidentiality

Using research data and our affinity diagram, we brainstormed app features

3.

To decide which features to move ahead with, we conducted a needs validation with 5 participants

Usability Testing

+

We conducted Think Aloud Sessions with 5 participants. We asked participants to work through a scenario, using a paper prototype, wherein they select a coping strategy to work on.