ROLE
Research Lead
TEAM
Tea-m-Boba
DURATION
January - March 2025
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Docs
Background and Identifying the Problem
Many young people avoid traditional mental health solutions due to stigma, cost, and fear of discussing personal issues with strangers. To address this gap, Sonar Mental Health offers a chatbot companion named Sonny who can engage with students in friendly, judgment-free mental health conversations.
While teens who try Sonar often find it helpful and comforting, Sonar's research uncovered that many students drop the platform at the onboarding. If Sonar doesn’t feel comfortable or approachable, it could drive students to walk away without experiencing the support they need.
Our Approach
We understand how important a first impression is. That's why my team and I focused on redesigning the onboarding experience specifically for teens age 13 - 18. Our goal was to make it feel more personal, intuitive, and reliable. We held biweekly meetings with the Sonar UX team to present and receive feedback throughout each stage of our research and design process.
RESEARCH
UCI Library Databases and Web Research
My first step was to understand the overall context surrounding mental health across teens. I researched case studies with quantified data and discovered some commonalities among student mental health. Here's what I found.
50%
22%
of adolescents have experienced a mental health disorder.
of high school students have considered suicide
Many young people avoid seeking help due to stigma, cost, and fear of discussing personal issues with strangers
Competitive Analysis
My team and I looked at 5 similar applications to see how they are addressing the gaps with student mental health. I focused on two applications: GoodTherapy and Betterhelp.
Key Findings
Two main approaches
AI-only chatbots: Available 24/7 but lack human depth
Human-only therapists: More insightful but less accessible
There is a need for a hybrid model combining AI and human expertise
DEFINE
User Stories and Personas
Through our findings, we created two personas to better understand our target users.
“As a high school student, I want to talk to a trusted person about my feelings so that I can balance managing my emotions, excel in my classes, and engage in extracurricular activities.”
“As a person struggling with anxiety, I want to speak to someone who encourages me so that I can be more confident in expressing my feelings and feel less overwhelmed about my future.”
IDEATE
Low Fidelity Mockups
I started with quick, lo-fi mockups to explore different layout ideas and interaction flows. This allows me to brainstorm ideas, piece together necessary details, get feedback from my team, and flesh out my ideas before pursuing a hi-fi prototype. Will be uploaded soon.
Prototype #1
Our goal for the initial prototype was to replicate the experience of using the chatbot. Unlike Sonar’s more straightforward interface, we took a different approach to onboarding by designing a texting-style sign-up process. This mirrors how students naturally interact on Sonar’s platform and allows students to know what to expect.
text-style onboarding
USER TESTING
First Round Interviews
We interviewed seven individuals aged 13 to 18 to gather feedback on Sonar’s current and our redesigned onboarding processes. I personally interviewed two people per interview iteration. Before the interviews, my team and I developed an interview protocol to guide the research and align on key objectives:
Identify pain points and areas to improve within the current onboarding process
Identify where users may lose interest in engaging with the app, and how to improve retention rates
Find opportunities to improve user engagement, satisfaction, and trust in the initial phase of interaction during the onboarding process
Have we achieved our goal of improving the onboarding experience?
The interview itself is broken into three parts
Evaluate and Navigate
my team’s mockup and Sonar’s original onboarding processes
Open-ended questions
about their experiences with each process
Reflect
on strengths and weaknesses of each prototype
Interview Findings
We synthesized all of the feedback in an affinity diagram. Overall, most participants preferred Sonar’s onboarding for straightforwardness despite liking a chat styled process. Based on this, we made the decision to follow Sonar’s style and focus on identifying opportunities for improvement.
Prototype #2
In our second prototype, we switched to a similar design as Sonar’s onboarding flow and focused on improving existing elements of Sonar’s design and introducing features such as:
Address user data privacy concerns
Allow users to personalize Sonny by changing the name and avatar
Clarify that students are interacting with a real person and not an AI bot
Modify the questions and answer choices to be more straightforward and inclusive
Include more varieties of input methods such as sliders, date scroll, dropdown menus, etc
Second Round Interviews
The second round interview follows the same structure as the first. Interviewees are given a refresher of Sonar’s onboarding process followed by a walkthrough of our prototype #2. Next is the user experience phase and lastly, the strengths and weaknesses of each prototype.
Compared to our first prototype, interviewees consistently noted that Prototype #2 felt more polished, intuitive, and engaging. This time, 100% of participants preferred our redesign over Sonar’s original onboarding. Participants appreciated the clarity with data privacy and Sonar’s purpose which helped them grasp the app’s value. The personalization feature was also very well received. Despite the positive response, interviewees pointed out opportunities to refine the experience further such as adjusting font size and spacing to improve readability, shortening the onboarding process, and making minor visual tweaks, such as color changes.
Final Prototype
With all of our research and feedback in mind, we created a final prototype that addresses the frustrations and areas of improvement we found. We tweaked our final prototype by increasing and bolding the font size, improving the Sonny personalization flow, and shortening the onboarding process by omitting some of the Sonny introduction screens.
LESSONS LEARNED
Reflection
Throughout this project, my team and I encountered a few challenges that affected our user research and design.The prototype was tested on a small sample size, which may not fully capture Sonar’s diverse user base. While we conducted a few interviews from external sources, time constraints, and legal procedures necessary to interview local high school students in Irvine prevented us from gathering as many outside interviewees as we’d hoped. Additionally, the interviews occurred virtually on Zoom, which limited my ability to observe non-verbal cues and assess how interviewees interacted with the prototypes.If I were to continue this project into the future, I would expand user testing to a larger and more diverse group of people, like local schools and university outreach programs. I would also like to reach out to people who specifically have struggled with their mental health to get specific insights on their experience with the Sonar app. I’m also interested in exploring additional features beyond just the ability to chat with a person, such as a mood tracker, mental health resources, and minigames.
