Background

For one week, my partner and I worked with Silvercloud, an Irish based business who are helping the fight against depression by providing solutions that effectively help people manage the way they think, act and feel.

Our concept was a smartwatch app which would allow users to discretely record their mood at a predefined time or when the app detected a change in their emotional state. The user could then make a more detailed recording of the event on their account with the logged state, location and time to aid in recall. This would provide their therapist with rich contextual information such as time, location, perspiration and so on, in addition to what the user recorded.

Research

We began by exploring the Silvercloud online platform to identify how a potential solution might fit into the existing system. We then researched common physiological symptoms of depression and anxiety to determine what an appropriate device for measurement might consist of, as well as the triggers which can provoke mood changes. To better understand our users, we used a Silvercloud persona, Jonathan, to develop our own persona and empathy map.

Initial Concept & Feedback

Two days into the project we met with Silvercloud to present our concepts:

1. A keyring mood tracker.
2. A smartwatch app.

Both solutions would be coupled with an app/web app for more detailed emotion recording. We illustrated these concepts using storyboards and wireframes.

We received positive feedback on focus on discreteness of the solutions, for considering the impact of an additional stressor in the user’s life. We chose to move forward with the smartwatch app as it requires no new hardware, a vibration can prompt the user to interact, and it can provide the therapist with relevant data: heart rate, blood pressure, activity levels, and sleep quantity and quality.

Refinement, Prototpes, & Final Concept

We developed the smartwatch concept, considering the key interactions the user would have with the interface for dismissing a notification to record their mood, and for recording the mood.

Using a paper prototype we received positive feedback from users for gesture based recording and a wrist flick for cancelling. We then tested a paper prototype of the app for creating a detailed mood recording and found that a multi-step procedure was preferred to a single form.

We then created digital wireframes of the smartphone app, smartwatch app, and the therapists UI.