Calm On!
Overview
Mobile Mental Health Game Design
UCSF COVID-19 Hackathon 2nd Place Winner
COVID-19 Global Hackathon 2.0 Honorable Mention
Role(s)
UX Designer / Interaction Designer
Goal
The main objective of the app is to educate children of ages (6-11) on emotional intelligence, healthy coping techniques, and ways to prevent COVID-19 from spreading.
UX Team
Farrah Wong
Peter Hsiao
Jacqueline Louie
Srujana Munamala
Tools
Figma
Illustrator
Photoshop
After Effects
Methods
User Research
Persona Development
Competitive Analysis
Wireframing + Prototyping
Usability Testing
Background
‘Calm on!’ is a mental health game app for children that first designed during UCSF’s COVID-19 Hackathon. Our project team is comprised of a diverse interdisciplinary group of researchers, designers, developers, artists, animators, and composers.
Of the over 400 participants who participated in the hackathon, our team was placed 2nd and received financial and legal backing to help make the product into a reality.
Over the course of the hackathon, the team needed to adjust and adapt to a variety of different challenges and constraints ranging from working remotely over a variety of different timezones, to recruiting the competent talent necessary to build the product within the limited timeframe.
The Research
In order to build a mental health app for children, we had to first gain a better understanding of children’s mental state and behaviors under quarantine. In a survey conducted with 15 children ages 6-11, these were some recurring sentiments that were voiced by participants.
“It makes me feel sad because I can't see my friends.”
“I'm very bored at home.”
“I feel frustrated because I can’t stay in the same place for a long time.”
Due to the time and privacy constraints that come with researching children during the pandemic we supplemented survey findings with outside research that was conducted on children’s mental health during COVID-19.
During COVID, The most prevalent psychological conditions for children: Fear of asking questions relating to the pandemic, poor sleep, poor appetite, and inattention. (Jiao et al., 2020).
With some research on hand we decided to craft a lean persona in order to have a clear idea of the target user in our minds over the duration of the sprint that we can revisit and reiterate upon in the future.
Lockdown has been flipped Joseph’s life upside down.
How might we help Joseph handle the emotional and mental distress that comes with living in quarantine?
The Concept
What makes this project unique was that our team wanted to address our problem in the form of a mental health game.
Center to the design of our app was the idea of creating an immersive world complete with characters, narratives, storylines, and other media that children would be delighted to interact with. Through collaborating with artists, animators, and story tellers, we crafted an introduction into the exciting world of Calm On. This opening animation introduces the user to some of the key characters that will guide them on their journey into learning about their mental health.
Competitive Analysis
While we knew we wanted our app to be kid-friendly, we lacked understanding of effective mental health techniques to confidently come up with features.
Before we got to ideating and designing our product, we decided to take a look at the kind of mental health applications that currently exist on the market.
Competitor Feature Comparison
While there were many apps on the market with features we identified to be practical and effective, none of the apps were quite geared towards our target age group (6-11).
What sets Calm On apart from other mental health apps on the market is that it is aimed at educating children of a younger demographic through the use of dynamic characters and storytelling.
Competitive Matrix
First Iterations
UCSF COVID Hackathon
We landed 2nd place (400+ participants) in the UCSF COVID-19 hackathon.
Through this experience we were able to secure financial and legal backing from Wilson Sonsini in order to continue the development of this project.
Devpost Links
More details on our first two iterations can be found here.
Progress and Updates
Since starting the project back in May of 2020, the team has made significant progress in the design and development of Calm On.
Milestones
Assembled team of dedicated therapists and mental health advisors.
Activity design for Flynn, Aurora, and Sprite.
Revamped animations and assets.
Cross platform mobile iOS and Android development.
Design System Creation.
Going Forward
Our first MVP release is scheduled to drop early 2021! Our goal now is to secure funding to continue the growth of the project.
Flynn by Tony Vu
Get Involved
We continue to conduct user interviews and usability testing on a regular basis. Feel free to email our team at calmon.app@gmail.com if you are interested in helping out with the development of the app!