Proposal
In 2017, suicide accounted for a third of all teenage death in Australia, and suicide rates hit a ten-year high (“Beyond Blue” n.d.). Additionally, it is estimated that one million Australians will suffer from depression and two million from anxiety each year (“The Facts” 2019).
The link between these points is that people with mental illness are 11 times more likely to commit suicide than healthy people (Beck et al. 1990).
Due to the concern of the rising percentage of suicide rate, we decided to explore depression in the aspect of social media, where research has shown that the use of social media is significantly associated with the increasing number of depression (Lin et al. 2016). We aim to encourage people to seek help when having depression arises from social media and enhance the connection between clients and professional therapists.
According to Beyond Blue (2019), 15% of Australians experience depression in their lifetime; currently, 6.2% are affected by it. As stated in the introduction, suicide rates are high; finding ways to curb it is paramount. Moreover, depression may worsen if not perceived and treated properly. As is stated by Wanger (2018), most young people don’t recognize signs of depression and they tend to express their emotions as irritation, which could cause social isolation. It is crucial to raise awareness of depression, especially among the young to minimize the impact of depression in their lives.
Social media is ubiquitous; 72% of Australians (18 million people) are active users (“Digital 2019: Australia Social Media Usage Is Growing - We Are Social Australia” 2019). It has a number of benefits; it enables near-instant communication to many people at once from anywhere, it allows people otherwise affected by social anxiety to communicate with other people, and it connects people who would otherwise have neither cause nor manner to meet.
However, social media also has a darker side. Over-reliance on social media to communicate can further isolate someone and erode face-to-face social skills even more. Use of social media to follow specific people can result in overinflated perceptions, leading to self-esteem issues (Tandoc, Ferrucci, and Duffy 2015). Communication from anywhere, at any time, allows abuse to follow people into otherwise safe spaces. These factors lead to elevated stress, isolation, and deterioration in mental health. Given how widespread social media is, it stands to reason that the effect of an intervention in this area could have on depression is significant. Moreover, We have researched about previous attempts towards depression that will be discussed later.
The aim of the project is to enable people to test and understand their depression level and provide them with a private and flexible way to seek help. Our research suggests that social media is a large driver of depression and other mental illnesses, so to maximise the impact of the solution we will target social media users.
The design opportunity is to encourage people to seek help by developing an alternative therapy method for people having depression. Research suggests it is more efficient to detect and monitor depression through an app (“Digital 2019: Australia Social Media Usage Is Growing - We Are Social Australia” 2019). Thus, instead of the traditional method of users meeting therapists face-to-face, we aim to create a technology that connects users and professionals directly in a more flexible manner.
Through the application, the users can test their mental state, take snapshots of social media posts and annotate them with their thoughts/feelings, and write journal-like entries about more general reflections towards social media posts; the application will then give out suitable advice and suggest professional help based on their personal situations. Once that connection is established, the user can provide these snapshots and entries to facilitate meaningful interactions with the professional.
Our intended audience includes social media users with depression and potential risk of depression from excessive social media usage as well as the mental health therapists.
Research (Beyond Blue, 2019) has shown that there are possible characteristics about people having depression from behaviour and physical aspects:
- Isolated from families and friends
- Stay online for a long period of time
- Have bad habit of routine (sleeping issues)
- Significant weight loss or gain
The below two characteristics are possible behaviour of people having depression through personal observation:
- Posting negative emotion stories frequently
- Have intention of suicide through posts on social media
Pacifica
Pacifica is a mobile app based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It enables users to rate daily experiences and address mood issues through several ways such as meditations and breathing practices. The app also provides health care features like sleep analysis, encouraging users to develop healthy life skills in the long term. Pacifica is highly rated for its clear presentation of CBT techniques, good privacy security and pleasant UI design.
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/615163630329181461/
However, as a self-help application, Pacifica’s features are not well structured, thus not forming a clear guideline to help users cure depression. Despite the users’ moods and the causes, Pacifica always uses a fixed set of methods, hoping it will ease users’ anxiety.
Different from Pacifica, our application focuses on forming a proper connection between depressed users and professional therapists. Through a detailed test, the app will understand the user’s depression level and mental issues. Based on the test result, the app then finds an appropriate therapist for the user, enabling them to communicate through the app immediately. Compared to Pacifica, our application provides a more flexible solution for users depending on their specific mental issues, and is more likely to relieve/cure depression with professionals’ help.
Phase 1
Time: Week 6 - Week 8
- Discussion about the problem space and design opportunity
- Construct interview questions
- Interview with 16 participants who are related to depression and social media to better defined our design solutions (4 people to interview per team member)
- Evaluate the feedback and share insights gained from interviews
- Design our prototype and define the functionality based on the results from the interviews
- Enhance team communication and responsibility
Result:
- Proposal Document (Due Week 7)
- Low-fidelity prototype design based on interview feedback
Phase 2
Time: Week 9 - Week 10
- Team stand-ups (Week 9)
- Design of proof-of-concept prototype based on the low-fidelity prototype
- Construct user testing plan
- User testing on our prototype for 10 participants (First iteration)
- Evaluation on the user testing results and document the changes
Result:
- Implement the feedback from first iteration on proof-of-concept prototype
Phase 3
Time: Week 11 - Week 12
- Team stand-ups (Week 11)
- Construct user testing plan
- User testing on our prototype for 10 participants (Second iteration)
- Evaluation on the user testing results and document the changes
- Improve the prototype based on the feedbacks and research
Result:
- Well-constructed proof-of-concept prototype with two iterations
Phase 4
Time: Week 13
- Prototype showcase (22 October)
- Design a poster and other media to better deliver our concept in the showcase
- Documentation about our concept and final prototype
Result:
- Well-prepared for the showcase with final prototype and the media to support our concept
| Target Audience | Features to test | Results | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 Interview | 12 participants • People have or had depression due to social media(ideally) • People having a close relationship with people having depression |
• Semi-structured interview about people having depression • The reason they are using social media (ex, peer influence) • The frequency of using social media • The reason that cause depression (ex, cyberbullying) • Introduce the technology to the participants • Whether the technology help them and will they use it • Suggestions on the functionality about the technology |
• Better identify our target users and understand their essential needs • Analyse and gain insights of the results from the interviews • Specify our core feature and what is important to our target user • Develop a low fidelity prototype that contains the core features |
| Phase 2 Interview on prototype | 10 participants that have the previous defined characteristics (possible previous interviewees) | • Testing on the core functionality: • Testing on their depression level and give advice to users based on the testing results • Suggest therapists to users • Writing journals about their social media reflections • Further suggestions on the functionality and design on the app |
• Whether they will keep recording journals • Whether writing journals is helpful for their situation • Whether they are willing to use the app to document and share their situation • The UI design of the app |
| Phase 3 Interview on prototype | 10 participants that have the previous defined characteristics (possible previous interviewees) | • Testing on the revised previous features including journal and testing mechanism • Connect the users and the therapists |
• Whether the functionalities encourage people to seek help and document their emotions towards social media |
🤔 Raymond Kiss
⭐ Bachelor of Engineering (Software)
⏫ Strengths:
● Good programming skills
● Some design experience
● Slow as molasses
⏬ Weaknesses:
● Bad at paperwork
✨ Aspirations & Goals:
● Learn more programming skills
● Balance workload properly for once
🤔 Naoya Yamamoto
⭐ Bachelor of Information Technology (Enterprise Information Systems)
⏫ Strengths:
● Basic programming and design skills
⏬ Weaknesses:
● Limited programming skills
✨ Aspirations & Goals:
● Improve my programming skills
● Learn how to prevent social media users from getting depression
● Improve teamwork and communication skills
● Learn the process of design making
🤔 Yun-Tung Shen (Sheryl)
⭐ Bachelor of Information Technology (Software Information Systems & UX Design)
⏫ Strengths:
● Have previous design experience
● Willing to learn new skills
⏬ Weaknesses:
● Lack of programming skills
● Laziness
✨ Aspirations & Goals:
● Understand more about people with depression
● Design a method that will help people who are suffering from depression
● Follow the ‘Plan of work’ and complete the project on time
● Learn useful tools for implementing prototype
● Deliver our concept and prototype on the showcase successfully
🤔 Shawn Xue
⭐ Bachelor of Information Technology (UX Design)
⏫ Strengths:
● UI/UX design experience
⏬ Weaknesses:
● Terrible communication skills
✨ Aspirations & Goals:
● Gain experience of mobile app design and programming
● Improve communication skills
Strengths - What are our strengths?
- Depression being well known topic, high awareness
- High potential to gain interests from users
- Design implementation is realistic as it is not complicated
Services - What capabilities can we access?
- Gain inspiration from existing solutions to solve this issue
- Domain research from other teams
- Learning from previous attempts to solve depression
Support - What support do we have from others?
- Online articles and previous research done from our team
- Conducted brainstorming
- Previously implemented designs
Challenges - What problems stand in our way?
- Understanding depression itself and the detailed causes of it
- Understanding how to implement the application to be effective and accessible to users
- Making our design unique and effective compared to pre-existing application/awareness to depression
- Competition with existing designs to prevent/cure depression
Capabilities Required - What skills do we require/must develop?
- Involvement of mental therapists
- Programming skills to build and debug application
- Location services
- Database to store patients’ and mental therapists’ profiles
Opportunities - What opportunities have presented themselves?
- Improve connections between patients and mental therapists
- Create an application that supports the community with depression
- Give depressed patients an opportunity to connect with mental therapists
- Help patients gain confidence to speak up and improve their life
Risks - What risks come with those opportunities?
- Data security
- Privacy issues
- Exposure of location
- Users might not prefer the form of mobile application
Responses - What responses do we expect from others?
- If the solution is effective (i.e. achieves design goals), it will improve quality-of-life for patients.
- If proper research is not performed before/during design, there is a chance the inappropriate solution will worsen quality-of-life for patients (e.g. recommending a patient to a Facebook support group where they may be exposed to toxic users).
- No comparable solutions have been found; it is assumed that (if the solution is effective) people working in this domain will, at least, not be opposed to the solution’s existence and at best actively aid it
- Otherwise, design will be improved to meet their needs
Regulations - What regulations may impact our solution?
- Moral and ethical considerations when interviewing people
- Privacy issues
- Sharing information to third parties
Returns/Rewards -What is the business value of each opportunity and risk?
- Decrease in depressed social media users
- Decreased suicide rates
- Improved life quality of patients
- Easier/better communication between patients and therapists
- Sense of pride and accomplishment
Beck, A. T., G. Brown, R. J. Berchick, B. L. Stewart, and R. A. Steer. 1990. “Relationship between Hopelessness and
Ultimate Suicide: A Replication with Psychiatric Outpatients.”
The American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (2): 190–95.
“Signs and Symptons” 2019. Beyond Blue. Accessed September 5, 2019. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WGntFjxmODStEegy_0u1MGlJ4Q_NQ5i8LybfYbVNf4Q/edit#
“Statistics.” n.d. Beyond Blue. Accessed September 4, 2019.
https://www.beyondblue.org.au/media/statistics.
“Digital 2019: Australia Social Media Usage Is Growing - We Are Social Australia.” 2019. We Are Social Australia.
February 4, 2019.
https://wearesocial.com/au/blog/2019/02/digital-report-australia.
Lin, Liu Yi, Jaime E. Sidani, Ariel Shensa, Ana Radovic, Elizabeth Miller, Jason B. Colditz, Beth L. Hoffman, Leila M.
Giles, and Brian A. Primack. 2016. “ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND DEPRESSION AMONG U.S. YOUNG ADULTS.”
Depression and Anxiety 33 (4): 323–31.
Tandoc, Edson C., Patrick Ferrucci, and Margaret Duffy. 2015. “Facebook Use, Envy, and Depression among College
Students: Is Facebooking Depressing?” Computers in Human Behavior.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.053.
“The Facts.” 2019. Beyond Blue. 2019.
https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts.
Wagner, K. 2018. Presidential Address: Depression Awareness and Screening in Children and Adolescents. Journal of the
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 57(1), 6-7.