04. Hush;

Conquer Your Anxiety

Hush is a platform that aims to provide instant temporary relief to your social anxiety needs. It helps you calm down in a few simple steps by curbing and regulating anxious feelings through various modules.

Platform

Mobile

Timeline

3 weeks

Context

Social anxiety is the fear of social situations that involve interaction with other people. It's a cycle of overthinking that can only be curbed with conscious action and reaction including long-term healthcare.

Symptoms may include excessive fear of situations in which one may be judged, worry about embarrassment or humiliation, or concern about offending someone.

But what can be done on the spot for temporary relief during these uncomfortable social situations?

The Challenge

The challenge here was to come up with a solution that targets anxiety related symptoms on the spot to be able to provide temporary relief during these social situations and help the user regulate their feelings.

Goal

From the research insights, I was able to narrow down my focus to 2 main aspects: the experience itself and the ease of interaction. Solving for these would cover my main problem areas.

Improve experience during anxious periods
Easy to use and interact with even in distress

Approach

Understanding The Problem

Before I can get to defining the problem statement, I listed the various situations that cause social anxiety and what type of unique symptoms are exhibited based on my initial research. This would help me further understand the users and their experiences.

SITUATION

Meeting people
Interacting with authority
Intense conversations
Parties and gatherings
Speaking with strangers
Public speaking/performing

SYMPTOMS

Nervousness
Restlessness
Panic
Breathing difficulties
Increased sweating
Trembling

Defining The Problem

With a consolidated idea of the situations and symptoms, I could categorize this information further by creating personas to understand our target audience and how various situations give rise to different types of symptoms. This would help me define the main problem.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The Introvert

The Student

The Quiet One

SCENARIO

Attend a party of a considerable size

Give a talk in front of a large crowd

Transaction with a stranger

SYMPTOMS

• Safety Behaviours

• Panic

• Nervousness

• Escape

• Nausea

• Trembling

• Irregular Breathing

• Muscle Tension

• Negative Thoughts

• Overthinking

• Restlessness

• Avoidance

The Solution

Before getting started on the design process, it is important to understand that symptoms cannot be instantaneously treated with the same solutions. Hence it essential to come up with a solution that caters to the user and their scenarios without having to put further pressure on them. Each symptom is unique and therefore required a different approach.

Ideate

I started by analyzing the symptoms and the various ways they could be regulated. Each scenario and their subsequent symptoms were found to have a range of possible solutions on how to curb them.

SYMPTOMS

• Safety Behaviours

• Panic

• Nervousness

• Escape

• Nausea

• Trembling

• Irregular Breathing

• Muscle Tension

• Negative Thoughts

• Overthinking

• Restlessness

• Avoidance

POSSIBLE

SOLUTIONS

• Regulate breathing

• Positive self talk

• Establish surroundings

• Question your thoughts

• Engage in calming

audio/video

• Deep breathing

• Positive self talk

• Regulate breathing

• Positive self talk

• Establish

surroundings

The possible solutions I found helped outline the basic features and design principles of the product

A breathe feature - To help the user regulate their breathing to a normal pace
An audiovisual - To help calm nerves
Positive quotes and sayings - To motivate the user
A grounding feature - To help users establish their surroundings
A writing experience - To write down thoughts and reduce emotional and cognitive load

Designing The Experience

For the final product, I emphasized the visual consistency and ease of interaction to serve the main functionalities.

An overview of the app's experience

Onboarding

Splash Screen & Sign Up

Home

Minimal quick access buttons to instant solutions during periods of anxiety

Breathe

Breathe allows users regulate their breathing pattern by syncing it with the animated visual that displays a relaxed breathing pace

Ground

Ground asks users to list down 3 things in their surroundings to help establish their current space and self to help reduce panic and stress

Visualise

Visualize lets the user choose from an array of audiovisual scenes.

It plays a calming looped visual coupled with audio to helps with nerves and restlessness.

Inspire

Inspiration is a collection of quotes, sayings, affirmations and advice to browse through for every mood to help motivate the user.

They can also be bookmarked for future reference.

Journal of Oblivion

This feature allows users to jot down their thoughts and feelings to ease stress without actually recording and storing typed information. The text disappears instantaneously when typed.

Profile

User profile with a thought of the day that updates daily.

The user's journey is stored in the form of dated stories that records the time spent on the app, the feature used most and any bookmarked content.

UI Guide

App Icon

AaBb

Type

Lato Regular

Heading 1 20

Heading 2 18

AaBb

Lato Bold

Heading 2 18

Heading 1 20

Paragraph 16

Paragraph small 14

Colour Palette

#7FACD6

#C0B9DB

#CFCDE6

#636363

Iconography

CTA

Formfield

The Process

UNDERSTAND

• Understanding social

anxiety and its

characteristics

• What are our goals

• What are our

constraints

DEFINE

What is the main problem we're trying to tackle with this product

EXPLORE

• Exploring possible

solutions

• Picking the

essential features

DESIGN

• Shaping the

experience

• Designing the

features, user

interface and

interactions

Understand

I started off my research by understanding social anxiety as a whole. What causes it, what triggers it, the situations and scenarios, etc. A long term solution like therapy was found to be of utmost importance to combat severe cases of social anxiety, whereas smaller solutions like setting goals and rewarding oneself were specified for the minimal cases of social anxiety.

I then went on to interview a few peers who experience social anxiety to understand what kind of situations trigger them and what are their ideal solutions to curbing the symptoms on the spot.

The symptoms could be categorized into

Physical
Cognitive
Behavioral
Emotional

Since I was focused on temporary relief during anxiety-inducing situations, I noted down the possible triggers, scenarios, and solutions from my research to be able to narrow it down and design the UX of the product.

Design Principles

FUNCTIONALITY

EASY TO UNDERSTAND

ACTIONABLE

The design should be easy to interact with and serve its core functionalities

It should be easy to understand with minimal visual load for use by anyone including those in distress

It should push users to access more information to promote better mental health practices

Explore

I sketched out the basic solutions of what I wanted the experience to feel and look like. This helped me prioritise the various features and design the final solution.

Closing Notes

Working on this problem statement proved how motivating users emotionally through a digital experience can be a daunting task.

Picking and choosing what features are essential to the user is an important step when it is going to have a direct impact on them.

Going further, features that allow users to seek help from experts directly through text/voice channels can be explored to help define a more cohesive motivational experience.