To gain some understanding of the problem space, I conducted a literature review. It really helped to discover the challenges faced by people struggling with non-adherence and also find out exactly how technology was being leveraged to help individuals tackle these struggles. Read the whole literature review here

These were my main insights:

Before I could dive into ideation, I had several things to do. First, I needed to take a look at my data and map out the business goals with my user goals.
But why did I have to do this?
This is super helpful in giving this project more clarity and could possibly help us define the scope of the project.

So the solution was clear: a feature-rich mobile application that provided personalized content to the user, act as a one-stop shop for all psychotropic medication queries.

Now that I narrowed down the technology to a mobile application - I wanted to see how other apps on the market today were doing and the kind of features they offered. I chose 3 direct competitors and 2 in-direct competitors.

I was not so surprised to see that apps that "claimed to help and support individuals on psychotropic medication" merely acted as virtual pill boxes. However, there was something that caught my eye - the app "Wellth" uses incentives to increase medication adherence. But I was not able to explore the app because it requires a code from your medical practitioner in order to log-on.
But I was surprised that both in-direct competitors offered a lot of personalized and mental health tools to their users - like a mood and side-effect tracker, body scanning, etc.

I was super eager to use the information I learned to start putting some solutions and ideas together. However, I needed to place some constraints on myself so I would not get carried away:

This is where things get interesting and kind of fun. I mentioned an application earlier called "Wellth" and the app uses financial incentives and AI technology to help patients struggle with medication non-adherence stay on-track. This idea resonated with me a lot because I come from a behavioral psychology background but I wanted to look beyond just "financial incentives".
I had a meeting with my mentor to speak to him about Fogg's Behavioral Model but while talking to him I said something along the lines of "this application needs to make taking medication a sustainable habit". That's when my mentor suggested I look to the Hook Model by Nir Eyal. ‍

The Hook Model was proposed by Nir Eyal and it consists of 4 phases - Triggers, Action, Variable Reward and Investment. According to Eyal by the time the user goes through the 4 phases they have established a habit and instead of exiting the loop they stay in it.

Let me illustrate with an example:

But this alone will not help my users keep to their adherence plan. This is where the secret sauce enters the playing field: gamification.

But what does gamification have to do with anything?
That's a great question! My theory is that gamification will motivate the user to interact with the app more because gamification doesn't just mean earning rewards it can also impact the overall "funness" of the app - the microcopy, the illustrations, the eventual UI design.
Long story short? It could be one of the reasons why users feel motivated enough to stay adherent to their medication.

It was important for me to build a story with the tasks and showcase some of the gamification potential of the application.
The first thing they would do is set up or create their account.

So, after they setup their account - what would they do? They would check-in one of their daily medications and earn some coins for completing the task.

The perfect ending would be if the user checks their progress and then share it with their care or support system.

These are some of the sketches that helped cement the user flows.

After some sketching, it was time to start exploring and expanding these ideas on Figma. ‍

For this project, I took the opportunity to go out of my comfort zone and take a shot at micro-copy and UX writing. The aim was for the micro-copy  to meet the users where they were emotionally and mentally.

The micro-copy had to be:

In consonance with the A Hero’s Journey tone, the typography and vector graphics used had to be in sync as well.

Even after the design process began on Figma, there were numerous amounts of iterations that needed to be done. The lesson here is that it is very important to test your ideas early so that you can either validate them or iterate upon them.

As mentioned earlier, data visualization was a tough nut to crack for me. The advice that was given to me was to "look beyond graphs and think shapes, numbers and visuals."

Another major change was the simplification of the check-in progress. Originally, I was giving the user way too many options and after a series of feedback inspired changes - I made a check-in screen that was minimal and easy to understand.

But the story still felt incomplete - getting feedback at this stage was crucial because my mentor suggested I take a few steps back and find another task that would help fill the story gap. Some brainstorming moments later, I figured out a way to complete this story cycle and show users that they had multiple goals that they needed to work towards! I also may have taken something from the user onboarding journey and that was setting goals.

The wireframes were ready for launch but I took it one step further by exploring some intuitive micro-interactions for my prototype!

I recruited 5 participants (from neurodivergent Facebook groups) and conducted a moderated remote usability test through Butter (a platform much like Zoom). To read the full usability plan and script click here.
My participants were asked to:

The participants behavior and reactions were observed in real-time as this was a moderated remote usability test. 5 out of 5 participants felt the app was "celebrating the small victories" and felt that the language used was "super playful and motivating without being patronizing"

In particular, the users loved the coin animation and felt like the earning something was a “small rush of dopamine”. 

 I compiled my findings into an affinity map and used the insights to help me prioritize my revisions.

To see my entire affinity board on FigJam click here.

Here are a few of the changes that were made to the designs:

To see all of the changes click here.

These are few of the key screens:

This project really drove home the concept of iterative design for me. There were many times I tested my ideas during group critique sessions and I had to go back to the user flows and wireframes to iterate on them. So fail fast and remember that the design process is not linear and that is okay!

Early on in my design process, I got very caught up in the user onboarding journey. I had to take a step back from the project and revisit alternate flows to check which ones would help tell the story better. Don't be afraid of taking a step back to gather yourself and getting a fresh perspective.

I am still struggling a little with data visualization but I learned that it requires its own approach and understanding.

A Hero’s Journey is a passion project of mine and there’s still so much exciting work to be done on it! Here are a few ideas I have for the next steps:

Interested in reaching out and talking about my work? Contact me here!