A mood-tracking app that identifies your stress triggers

For this 2-week project we were asked to create a wellness app. Mental health is a vital part of our well-being. We live in a constantly buzzing world, overstimulation wherever you go. People take very little time to reflect on themselves and their days. But it is necessary that we do. We are all constantly focused on making it work; work for our family and friends, work for our partners, even making it work for strangers and of course, work itself. Yet, we tend to forget about ourselves. And we go without realizing that our systems are affected, until some ‘burn-out’. This is what got me interested in working on a mood tracking app.

Observe and Learn (Research)

The market is crowded with apps that help you keep track of your mood and have a strong focus on self-care. But I still dove into it, wanting to figure out if there was something that was missing. After an initial general survey, I got a pretty good overview about the topic.

People mainly connect mood tracking to self-improvement or as a tool in therapy. Mental health is important to everybody. People could imagine using a mood tracking app to understand themselves better. I asked about positive and negative impacts on the mood. A rich social life was the biggest positive impact and stress and a lack of sleep impacted people’s moods negatively.

Looking at the competitors, I decided to focus on people in therapy. Studies show that in western countries more than 20 percent of the people experience at least one episode of clinical depression.

Everybody I talked to said that mental health is important and the biggest positive contribution to their mental health is their social surroundings. The things that mainly influence their mood in a negative way are stress and a lack of sleep. Key takings from this are that the app needs to be connected to the phones sleep tracker. And it should be able to figure out what the individual stress triggers are for the person tracking their mood.

For my interviews I talked to people who have at least once been in a therapeutic environment and are experienced in tracking their mood. Their therapists asked them to keep a diary to write down what they did throughout the day and how each activity made them feel.

Writing a journal takes a long time!

With this at hand they collaboratively analyze it with their therapists and try to find triggers. With this in mind they’re able to then avoid certain triggering situations and learn about tools on how to deal with them.

Define

I listed the key findings of my survey and the user interviews in an affinity diagram to help me narrow it down do a problem.

Putting yourself in the users perspective is key. After gathering my findings I started thinking about the user journey. When would the user need the app. What are the patients touch points? Talking to people they either take the time at night to keep a log of their day and experiences or during the day if something unusual occurred.

I only reflect on myself if something out of the ordinary happened.

So the app should have an option to quickly track your mood during the day, and a more detailed one for the night. The patient should always be able to go back in and edit their tracked entry.

Meet the persona:

Sarah E., 34
Brand Manager, single

started therapy, being treated for anxiety and panic attacks.

She is frustrated with tracking her mood in a journal, it takes a lot of time. Especially when she is on the move and something unusual happens it inconveniences her to write it down. Sometimes she forgets about what happened during the day. Whenever she goes over her journal with her therapist it is complicated to make the connections and some pieces are missing. It is a weary process to make all the connections of her activities and feelings.

How might we expedite Sarah’s mood tracking and help her summarize her feelings for the next therapy session?

An app that offers a fast track feature, with the option to add details to it. Activities need to be tracked, in order to make the connections to what is triggering the patient. And finally a report, that can be send to the therapist prior to the therapy session to give a detailed overview, so that the therapist and the patient can actively talk about what is causing the stress. The app guides people alongside therapy and provides them with valuable insights about themselves.

Ideate

I started playing with lo-fi sketches to figure out how the app needs to be constructed. The main pain point here was to figure out how to start. Do you start with a glass (half empty/half full kind of day),

I had different versions, but the one with the slider stuck. After testing the different options, people were most comfortable with the slider. It was an intuitive way to determine the current mood level. It turned into a color slider, green for positive emotions and red for the negative ones.

Looking at the competitors it became clear, that a lot of them had cute illustrations and little faces. They were either a bit childish or so minimalistic and reduced that the user got lost within the app and its function.

Prototype

The app is called Mood and supports people going through therapy. Patients keep a journal of their daily activities and the connecting emotions. The app provides the patients with a report of their recent tracks and evaluates possible triggers (negative and positive).

The main function of the app is the connection that’s being made and evaluation of data that the user feeds the app. Mood recognizes patterns ins behavior and identifies triggers for stress, anxiety and even positive emotions.

Test and possible future iterations

After gathering feedback I will start to iterate further on it. It was too feminine and my goal was to appeal to all genders, since mental health knows no gender.

Another possible goal is that the app is connected to a therapist. The therapist then has a desktop version and an overview of their patients.