RESEARCH

Personal Experience

Finding a therapist is difficult. Finding a therapist that you trust and can afford is close to impossible. There was a time where I really needed to speak with a therapist. I messaged around 100 therapists. About 10 of those therapists responded to my inquiry. Most of them referred me to other therapists. The ones that could take me, I could not afford. The therapists that were referred to my never responded to my inquiries.

I took matters into my own hand and started Googling what I was feeling so I could help myself. I came across many articles and began to understand what was going on, but nothing helped ease my symptoms.

Eventually, I came across a Psychologist on YouTube. I listened to her content, daily. I practiced everything she said people should practice when feeling this way. 3 - 6 months later, I felt a lot better. She saved my life. I was on a high around this type of content that I began to look for more, but there wasn’t much out there like this. I thought I should build a product that allowed mental health experts create audio content for people who couldn’t find or afford a therapist and needed help now.

Here’s what Sanomind sought out to solve.

Therapy is unaffordable for around 25 million people in America. While many people have insurance and a good amount of therapists offer low cost services, therapy is still unaffordable for many.

For those who can afford therapy, they find it difficult finding the right therapist. People who go to therapy will usually drop off after the 1st or 2nd session with a therapist. Many of these people will go through 3 to 4 therapists before they find the right one.

Competition

At the time of the idea, the only competition was YouTube. Not many, if any, therapists were putting out content. This was pre social media craze! Years later when we actually started building the product there were some competitors that came to market.

Headspace
Calm
Shine App
Spotify
Patreon

Headspace and Calm were in the meditation space.
Shine App was a self-help app with personalized meditations.
Anyone can upload a podcast on Spotify including therapists.
Therapists can start a Patreon page, post content, and get support from their most loyal followers.

We saw there was space for a product that offered all of the above, but where the content creators were licensed mental health experts only.

ANALYSIS

Problem Statement

Millions of people do not have access to mental health help.

Executive Summary

A creator platform for licensed mental health professionals where they can build, grow, and monetize their community. People get the information they need and get to know therapists more intimately.

IDEATION

IDEATION

Design Principles

1. Easy to navigate - Both users and therapists should be able to navigate and use the app as they do with the apps they use daily.
2. Social currency - Although it’s an app to help people with their mental health, the product should make them feel good enough to share with others, friends, and on social media. If people know I am using the app, others want to use it as well.
3. Usability, beauty, and innovation - The product should balance between usability and beauty while innovating on the design.

Features

For users:

1. Content - When someone is suffering and searching for help or answers, they don’t want to be bothered with unnecessary steps and or clicks. All content will be on the very first page when they sign in or try us out before ever entering an email.
2. Subscribe to a therapist - Users will be able to subscribe to any therapist’s page so that they can stay up to date with any free content they choose to put out.
3. Join a therapist's community - Users will be able to join any therapist’s community by paying a small monthly fee.
4. Playlists - Users can create playlists for themselves.

For therapists:

1. Profile - Therapists are able to create a free profile with a beautiful layout.
2. Uploading - The rapists are able to upload audio content
3. Unsplash API - The rapists will be able to use beautiful images from Unsplashas their content covers.
4. Stripe payments - Therapists will be able to sign up with Stripe on our platform and begin taking monthly and or annual payments from users.

Search - We will have a search feature that will search and differentiatebetween: podcasts. single episodes, and therapists.

We want to create a product that is easy and helpful for people who are looking for help at the moment they need it. If someone needs help now, the product should deliver this with ease and as minimal clicks as possible. For therapists, we want to make sure they have everything they need in order to create content for their communities and very easy to use and navigate.

Wireframes

Main user flow

FEEDBACK

Team reviews

Every Friday we  review all the screens designed that week. Each teammate  gives their thoughts and any ideas for any changes they thought were necessary. Any changes would be made once we all agreed.

QA Testing

After handoff to the dev team, we would move on to testing the product. The QA Engineers would test the product and write up test cases to determine the product functions correctly.

ITERATIONS

Design literation's

Any errors that came back from QA would be reviewed by me and I'd make the necessary changes. At this point l'd handoff to the dev team again. If QA found no errors, we would go live!