CHUM: Portable Mental Health Companion

6-Day Challenge

CHUM: Portable Mental Health Companion

We want to better understand how individuals with Anxiety and Depression currently manage their mental health.

Outcome

We designed three versions of, CHUM, our portable mental health companion: The handheld digital console, the smartwatch, and the flip-convertible version of both. CHUM is designed to be able to guide a person through a daily check-in, play games, allow an individual to take care of their virtual pet, read affirmations, read biometric information such as heart rate fluctuations, dial an emergency contact number in time of crisis, and guide through coping skills. It is lightweight with small dimensions so that it can be discreetly carried around every day. Since this challenge lasted only 6 days we did not test our final prototype on any individuals who are dealing with anxiety and depression. We hope that the portable mental health companion that we designed will be integrated into people's daily lives and help them in their maintenance and times of crisis.

Problem

Taking care of one's mental health is important; however, it can be hard at times and it may require some external support. According to the National Institute of Medicine, the prevalence of any mental illness is 22% for adults in the United States. Our society is slowly beginning to normalize conversations surrounding mental health which is a huge step.

For this 6-day project, my team and I were challenged to design a physical-mental health product. Our time was limited but we uncovered pain points that individuals suffering from mental health illnesses were dealing with and spoke to subject matter experts to learn from their years of experience surrounding this topic. We learned that there was a gap when it came to recognizing that their mental health was declining and in the time it took for them to reach out for help when they were experiencing a crisis. We recognize that there are a lot of people who are dealing with one or more mental illnesses but who have not been diagnosed for a multitude of reasons. We wanted to find a tool that could aid you no matter where you find yourself in your mental health journey.

Approach

We conducted in-depth interviews where we listened and tried to understand what life is like living with a diagnosed mental health illness. We wanted to better understand how individuals with anxiety and depression are currently managing their mental health. We unpacked what we learned from our interview and secondary research process by brainstorming, doing journey and empathy mapping, and using an impact vs. feasibility chart. Then we came to a solution that was both feasible for our group to tackle in 6 days yet impactful for the individuals who may use it.

Next, we took all of our ideas and prototyped both versions of our physical product. This process was messy and quick. It taught us the importance of not marrying your first idea, and being open to the generation of new ideas that could better address the pain points of the individuals that you are designing for. After the preliminary rounds of prototyping, we iterated and then went through another round of prototyping before coming up with the final prototype that we were able to present.