Co-Designing Technological Mental Health Resources for Unaccompanied Migrant Youths
This UX research study was conducted as part of my PhD research and a four-year Innovation Training Network (ITN) – Technology-Enabled Mental Health for Young People (TEAM) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) initiative.
Background
Unaccompanied migrant youths are exposed to many mental health risks (Höhne, van der Meer, Kamp-Becker, & Christiansen, 2020; Hodes, Jagdev, Chandra, & Cunni, 2008), and even after arriving in the country of destination, they experience many stresses such as continued unstable educational and living situation (Hodes & Vostanis, 2019) and discrimination (Fazel & Betancourt, 2018). Research increasingly shows that technology can improve access to mental health interventions such as behavioral activation and interventions (Mohr, Burns, Schueller, Clarke, & Klinkman, 2013; Mohr et al., 2017; Rohani et al., 2019, 2020), CBT (G. Doherty et al., 2012), dialectical behavior therapy (Schroeder et al., 2018).
Aim: Exploring Design Requirements of Technological Mental Health Resources
The following aims guide the UX research project:
- Gaining an understanding of how social-ecological systems support and hinder unaccompanied migrant youth in using mental health apps as one form of resource
- Exploring the design opportunities and requirements of technological resilience resources as an integrated part of unaccompanied migrant youth’s social-ecological environment
UX Research Methods
- Co-Design Workshop
- Thematic Analysis
- Mind Mapping Activities
- Ideation Methods
- Development of A Design Framework
- Conceptualization of Design Examples
Software
- MAXQDA - Software for Qualitative Analysis
- InDesign
- Photoshop
- Premiere Pro
Activity | Material | |
---|---|---|
Day 1: „Creating your own company and getting to know your competitors‘ products“ | ||
Collect activities and things that help to sleep and feel better | Mind map | |
Create a company name and slogan | Mind map and skechting | |
Explore four different apps and collect negative and positive aspect | Apps, screenshots, post-it notes | |
Choose the most interesting app | ||
In-Between Day 1 and 2 | ||
Testing chosen app at home | Notebooks | |
Day 2: „Identify the weakness of your competitor’s product“ | ||
Collect more positive and negative aspects of the different apps based on testing at home | Mind maps with screenshots and post-it notes | |
Create a persona who would benefit of using the app | Mind map | |
Collect places, locations, barriers and facilitators of using the app | Mind map | |
Create one story where the app works well and one where the app fails | Storyboards | |
Day 3: „Create your company’s better concept“ | ||
Ideation activities to generate ideas | Mind map, paper, post-it notes | |
Create a prototype of your idea | Google Play Store description, paper prototyping | |
Pitch idea to a friend | Role-play |