How A UI Can help treat nervousness And depression

previous this yr, Robert Morris, an MIT graduate engaged on making well being care accessible to everyone via expertise, advised us about his dissertation project: Koko, a kind of social network concerned with psychological well being. Now, the so-referred to as “facebook for melancholy” is to be had to everybody.

As an app, Koko’s like a kinder, gentler Secret. users are encouraged to submit quick messages about what is at the moment making them depressed or anxious, along with what they suspect the worst case situation is. after they’ve posted their message, different customers try to level out what Morris calls the “bugs” in their working machine by way of suggesting extra positive tips on how to assume the problem.

as an instance, one Koko consumer not too long ago posted that her sister-in-legislation, cat, and mom all died within a couple months of each and every other, and now her father might have terminal most cancers. Her worst case scenario was once: “What if issues get worse?” Koko asks its customers to try to reframe the way the particular person is thinking about the issue: say, by means of suggesting she attempt to focus on her positive memories of the departed, or to recognize that each one of these tragic occasions are in some way unlinked, and therefore, things will in the end get better.

it can be easy enough to get people to share their problems anonymously, as many other apps have confirmed before Koko. however how do you get individuals to answer to these feedback in a good approach? The earliest versions of Koko depended closely upon tutorials sooner than it is advisable use the app, but it proved to be a big barrier to entry. “if you find yourself designing for an app, you’re dealing with bite-sized home windows of consideration,” Morris says. “The previous tutorial used to be four or 5 minutes, which does not sound like a long time, but feels glacial in an app.”

For Koko, the trick used to be to check out to whittle down its extensive tutorial into UI components and visual cues. as an instance, every publish is represented with the aid of a card with a randomly generated Rorschach blot. Morris says that now not all Koko testers take note the historical connotation of the ink blot, but they still intuitively have in mind it has one thing to do with perspective, and the different approach people can see the identical issues. Responding to a publish is as easy as tapping on an ink blot, shooting up a textual content entry field that cues the person to reply productively with pattern microcopy like, “What’s a extra confident take on this situation?” or “possibly you’re being a little too hard on yourself as a result of . . .”

so far, Koko’s customers are seem to be getting it. although the app goes officially public as of late, it has about 3,000 beta users already, and Morris says that 30% of these users are nonetheless coming back and the use of it once or twice a day after a couple of months. that’s a wholesome engagement charge for an app whose objective, on the skin of issues, just isn’t as simply understandable as Twitter’s or facebook’s. but good UI design and a conscientious solution to material have helped make Koko simply as compelling, by way of turning the senseless affirmation of different social networks on their head into one thing just as addictive, and some distance extra productive. when you hit the “like” button in Koko, that you would be able to feel assured it is doing a little just right.

download Koko from the iTunes App store right here.