Bloom
Find the therapist that's right for you.
Background
In the contemporary landscape of mental health, the significance of awareness and accessibility to quality therapy has escalated, particularly in the context of the post-pandemic era and the increasing prevalence of anxiety disorders among younger populations.
However, the process of locating a suitable therapist presents considerable challenges. Prospective clients often encounter limited therapist availability, insurance constraints, and, crucially, the difficulty of finding a therapist whose professional methodology aligns with their individual emotional and personality profiles.
Bloom addresses this gap by introducing an innovative platform designed to streamline the therapist-client matching process, prioritizing a harmonious alignment of emotional and personality attributes to enhance the therapeutic experience.
My Role
The development of Bloom involved comprehensive UX research to identify the challenges faced in therapist selection. This process, encompassing a range of methodologies such as surveys and user interviews, informed the design of a service focused on aligning therapists with clients based on personality and emotional compatibility.
Research Goal
To identify the primary challenges users encounter in finding a therapist, focusing on the struggles they face in establishing a successful therapeutic relationship, particularly regarding emotional and personality compatibility, once a therapist is found.
User Interviews
Interviews were conducted with producers and label managers to understand the key challenges in social media marketing. This helped in focusing the research towards achieving the project's objectives.
"I just want someone who really gets me. It's tough opening up only to feel like there's no real connection."
Insights
Surveys
Example Question
What Struggles do you face when marketing your work using social media?
Answer
Organization
Stress
Consistency
Assets
N/A
Percentage
Insights
75% of users prioritize personality in their therapist search.
87% prefer in-person over remote therapy.
Client comfort hinges on a good personal rapport with the therapist.
75% find it challenging to locate a therapist they feel comfortable with.
Competitive Analysis
Insights
There is no clear platform that bases the therapist search off of personality or other characteristics to determine if clients will click with their therapist.
Some platforms don't work with insurance, instead charging customers a fixed rate each month.
Most every platform has an onboarding questionnaire for clients, asking why they are starting therapy, and some preferences they have for a therapist (gender, race, specializations etc.)
Platforms seem to focus mostly on remote therapy due to the convenience, also making claims it is more successful than in-person therapy (with weak evidence to support).
Jennifer Clarke
Jennifer Clarke is grappling with the pressures of modern life and the impact of social media on her self-esteem and body image. She seeks to find balance and confidence through therapy, aiming to overcome her insecurities and embrace a healthier lifestyle.
Goals & Motivations
Develop a healthier relationship with social media, identifying and limiting triggers that impact her self-esteem.
Cultivate body positivity and self-acceptance, learning to appreciate her unique qualities and strengths.
Establish a more balanced lifestyle, integrating activities that promote mental and physical well-being.
Patterns & Behaviors
Frequently compares herself to others on social media, leading to feelings of inadequacy and stress.
Actively seeks out therapy sessions focusing on self-esteem and coping strategies for dealing with social media pressures.
Makes conscious efforts to engage in positive self-talk and activities that boost her confidence and reduce reliance on social media validation.
Digital Profeciency
Low
Medium
High
Problem
Research indicates that current platforms aimed at facilitating the connection between users and therapists often overlook a crucial element for successful therapy: the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist. This aspect is fundamental in determining the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.
Solution
The proposed platform aims to match clients and therapists based on key personality aspects like values, beliefs, and experiences. It will also incorporate practical features from existing platforms, such as insurance matching, to ensure comprehensive and compatible therapist-client connections.
Point of view
"As someone looking for therapy, its really hard to find a therapist where our personalities match. Humor is important for me to have when I'm talking about sensitive topics and its been really hard to find that in a therapist."
How might we
How might we offer a service that is able to identify therapist and client personality traits down to the finest details so we can connect clients and therapists with confidence that their personalities will mesh well and lead to the best therapy experience.
User Flows
Process
For user flows our focus was to visualize how users would navigate our service as a brand new users creating an account, as that is the end goal of our product to bring in as many users as possible. This meant outlining our onboarding questionnaire and thinking about how we would gauge gathering personality data based on our research.
Early Designs
Components
Screens
Feedback
Feedback from stakeholders was positive on the experience side, but we found that there was alot of work to do on the UI side. For typography, it felt like Sora wasn't the right fit with its sharper edges. We want to create a safe and comforting feeling with this service so when you start onboarding, you feel like everything is going to be okay. Color too needed some work, the flat green was initially meant to evoke a laid back and calming feeling but feedback wasn't matching up with that.
Typography
Moving forward we went with a new typeface, Nunito, for its clean and modern design. Nunito creates more of a sense of safety and security with its rounded letterforms and open counters. The typeface feels approachable, and its consistent stroke widths and legibility inspire trust.
Color
Primary dark
Hex: #073742
Primary
Hex: #13ABCE
Primary light
Hex: #E6F7FD
Primary dark
Hex: #121215
Primary
Hex: #738589
Primary light
Hex: #99BDC6
Iterations
Components
Design changes
Based on the feedback from stakeholders, we introduced our new typeface Nunito and made a variety of changes to our components with the new color pallette.
User Testing
100%
Felt tool was useful
100%
Task completion
75%
Positive feedback
Insights
100% of tasks were completed with an average time of 5m 30s.
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, users loved the look and feel of the app.
Users felt the onboarding questions worked well and asked the important questions to gage personality traits.
One user suggested having checkboxes instead of radio buttons to indicate you can select multiple.
Stakeholders felt their could be better use of color in the onboarding questions.
Final Designs
Insights
After the success of user testing we went ahead and designed the rest of our app while making some iterations to the our components. Mainly, we added a few questions in the onboarding user personality questionnaire and also designed a home screen for users when they are logged in. This is where they can search for therapists and start conversations.
Design changes
Designed user dashboard where they can connect and browse therapists they are compatible with based on personality.
Designed a messenger modal accessed from header (therapists would reach out first).
Increased simplicity and spacing of therapist profile cards.
Results & Next Steps
Results
We were overall satisfied with how this project turned out and were pleased with results and feedback from our users, giving us confidence that this tool would make a difference in their lives. One user who had been recently struggling to find a therapist expressed deeply how much they needed a tool like this. They felt with Bloom they would have to go through much less hassle meeting therapists and realizing it wasn't a good fit.
Next Steps
To work on this tool further, we would optimize the onboarding process, adding more questions to identify therapist and client personalities. Perhaps even coming up with a new system that clearly divides the stages of the onboarding process because of how extensive it could become.
Create a home page where users can search therapists without having to login for wider audience accessibility.
Additional personality questions in onboarding process for therapists and clients.
Integrate Truity personality tests to better connect therapists and clients.
A resource page where users can learn to create social media assets to post consistently.
