ALMA

Mindfulness companion focused on creating good sleep hygiene habits in young adults struggling with their mental health.

Duration// 10 weeks

Tools// Figma, Illustrator, InVision, Principle

Team Size// 3

Role// Ideation Lead, Prototyping, Information Architecture, Interviewing, Usability Testing, Video Production

Context

Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. For some individuals, major depression can result in severe impairments that interfere with or limit one’s ability to carry out major life activities.

Depression is highly treatable.

80% of people who receive treatment for depression go on to have a better quality of life – they feel better and enjoy themselves in a way that they weren’t able to before.

Support is needed outside of therapy and medication.

Evidence suggests that mindfulness exercises stands to help to people who experience depressive episodes.

How might we…

…improve the mood of young adults with depression through building better habits?

Response

Creating better sleep hygiene and introducing mindfulness practices around bedtime though Alma, a voice-based dawn-simulation lamp.

Bedtime Positive Reflection

Each night, Alma encourages users to reflect positively on a different daily reflection prompt

Bedtime Guided Meditation

Sleep meditation promotes relaxation and alters how the brain responds to stress

Morning Dawn Simulation

Gentle waking with a simulated sunrise can reduce feelings of sleepiness in the morning

Daytime Daily Lifts

Allows user to recall positive autobiographical memories straight from the Alma app

.

How it works

Bedtime Routine

Meditation, self reflection, and other mindfulness techniques are zero-cost methods to help alleviate some of the symptoms of depression. Many mobile applications aim to bring this to people but in reality by having these experiences live on a phone people are likely to get sidetracked by notifications and
other applications.

Alma is designed to remove these distraction and allow young adults to build by a healthy bedtime routine with the goal of improving their mental health and sleep habits.

Alma lives on the bedside table and only requires a simple voice prompt to be activated, “Alma, start bedtime routine”. Once activated, the user simply needs to respond to Alma’s prompts.

Waking up

Thirty minutes before the user’s desired wake-up time, Alma begins to emit a gradual sunrise. This enables the user to wake up naturally without the startling jolt of an alarm.

During the day

Therapists recommend individuals put together a collection of artifacts to serve as mementos for positive memories as these have been shown to help regulate positive emotion.

Daily Lifts offers positive memories in a digital format, ensuring privacy and easy access in periods of low mood.

How we got here

Scoping our research

Our research began with a literature review to gain a greater understanding of depression and how it affects young adults. We read and reviewed several articles that documented symptoms and treatment method. Through this we learned two statics that set the mood for our work going forward.

1. 36.4% of college students are depressed

2. 85% of those with depression are also diagnosed with anxiety

Cultural Probes

To gain a better understanding of college students and their experience with depression we asked 4 young adults with depression to complete our cultural probe in the form of a diary study.

We asked them over the course of 2 days to write how they felt and why during different parts of their day. In addition we asked them to answer various prompts about people they interacted with and how it made them feel.

A cultural probe was chosen due to the sensitivity of the topic. We wanted to use a method where the individual would remain open to sharing this very personal accounts of their day. We acknowledged that this could make people potentially feel very vulnerable so it was very important to us that the participant had the comfort of their own space and the ability to fill our the probe in their own time with as little outside pressure as possible.

After receiving the filled out probes we distilled the information into 4 insights.

Individuals felt lonely

Despite having a community around them, individuals still felt lonely. However, they didn’t blame their community, they blamed themselves for not being more outgoing.

“I wish that I had more friends and people would ask me to do things”
— Participant 4

Friends were mood boosters.

When individuals did spend time with friends, even when in a low mood, they mentioned feeling better after visiting with friends.

“Even if I don’t feel social in the moment, I am always happy after I spend time with people”
— Participant 2

Individuals were not getting enough sleep and it corresponded to a low mood for the day.

When participants mentioned not getting enough sleep, they mentioned having a low mood and mentioned it impacting what they were able to accomplish that day. However, when they did get enough sleep, they mentioned being in a better mood.

“I wish that I slept better and wasn’t so tired after just a few hours of being outside”
— Participant 1

Individuals were anxious
and self-conscious

When explaining why they felt the way they did on a given day, they mentioned being anxious and stressed, especially when relating to being in academic settings.

“I don’t want to go to class. So many things to do, causing me stress”
— Participant 3

Desired Outcomes

With these research findings, the team felt ready to move into the ideation process. However, to ensure that our solution embodied our research findings, we created a set of desired outcomes to measure the success of our solution.

1.
Help individuals perceive their day better

2.
Improve the individual’s quality of life

3.
Support individuals in overcoming their feelings of loneliness

4.
Lessen the effects of stress on their mental health

Ideation

Initial Concepts

With these desired outcomes in mind, the team worked together to came up with 90 potential solutions for our problem space. We did this as a team, each person being in charge of ~30 ideas. To encourage rapid ideation we only allowed a minute and a half per concept. Doing so kept our brains working quickly, allowing a diverse range of ideas to emerge.

Downselection

To start processing all of our ideas we went through and affinity mapped ideas that we thought had similarities into categories. I lead the team through an activity called six thinking hats to take a look at each of the groups through different critical lenses. Each team member was in charge of two different hats and we took turns talking about what worked and what didn’t for each type of thinking. This allowed us to critically explore our ideas with little room for personal bias. I then created a diagram from our notes to we could easily review all of the criticism of different ideas. From there I had the team complete a dot voting exercise where each team member got a number of colored dots and we could choose whichever ideas were our personal favorites.

With all of our cards now on the table we had a discussion about which ideas had the most votes, what ideas did we see meeting our desired outcomes, and what we were particularly excited about.

Through this, we found 3 ideas that we felt had a strong potential to meet all of our outcomes. IOT assistant to help create healthy habits in the home. a “Tamagotchi-plant” that reflects a person’s wellbeing and would allow them to see a manifestation of their physical and mental health, and a social app to get users outside allowing them to connect the outdoors and encourage physical activity.

Concept going foreword

From these three ideas, we sought out feedback from professors and colleagues to determine which to go forward with. From their feedback and some internal analysis from the team, we decided to go with an IoT focused solution that would help people build bedtime routines and healthy lifestyle habits, through positive reflection and goal-setting.

Rapid Paper Prototype

We created both a paper prototype and a voice prototype, and recruited five young adults for user testing.

I created a cardboard phone was used as we did not want to influence the feedback of our participants by giving them anything that looked high fidelity. For the voice, we decided to create recordings using Siri as we felt it would be an AI voice that participants were already comfortable with.

Our goals were to test the strength of our concept via the paper prototype and to determine whether users were comfortable responding to personal questions prompted by a virtual assistant.

Participants’ conceptual model of the product was unclear

The emphasis on building up a sleep routine was completely lost to additional features that asked about goal-setting and productivity.

“It’s a lifestyle coach — to help me stick to my goals”

Participants felt comfortable communicating with AI

This was reassuring as we wanted our interactions to be low-effort. A screen-based solution risked distraction and exposure to blue light.

“I liked the questions… I could see myself doing this every night”

Scoping Down

We were trying to do too much with our product, trying to build habits in multiple aspects of the users life, and we were headed in the direction of creating yet another habit tracker that the world didn’t need. We decided to revise our concept and focus entirely on the bedtime routine and helpinsleep.

Creating Alma

Concept Refinement

We fleshed out the features we wanted to include, guided by scientific articles. We also sought feedback via semi-structured interviews with two young adults who had experienced depression. Each feature was assessed according to whether they contributed towards our desired outcomes.

Positive Reflection - Helps individuals perceive
their day better

The frequent practice of positive thinking can help individuals restructure and replace irrational negative thinking.

Sleep Meditation - Lessens the effects of
stress on mental health