Improving the effectiveness CBT with the help of Journaling
Intro
According to my research most people who don't journal, don't do it because of how daunting an empty page seems. Those who do, derive a lot of value from it. Therapists often recommend journalig as an activity.
Pour is an AI powered journal that helps you express your emotions easily with the help of guided journaling and prompts. It also has a toolset to connect your journal to your therapy sessions.
Scope
Capstone project
Period
January, 2023 – May, 2023
Team
Solo project
My Role
UX Research, UI Design
Key Deliverables
Research, Wireframes, Prototype
100%
of interviewed therapists would recommend Pour to their clients
150+
Signups on the interest form
Background
This project was my capstone project submission for my grad degree in product design at Parsons School of Design. This was a 5 month long project where I worked as a solo UX Researcher, UI Designer and eventually even full stack developer. This project earned me an honours degree and ended up being a featured project!
Why Journaling?
I was introduced to journaling as a medium of expression when I started therapy. Since then, it has helped me immensely and I wanted to make this tool as accessible and optimal as possible. This project is a deep dive into journaling as a practise and how it can be used to optimise CBT sessions (more on that later).
Research
Before launching Figma, I had to figure out what I will design. The goal of the research step was to figure out why (and why don't) people journal, how therapists use journaling as a tool and some of the existing tools in the market.
Interviews
I conducted qualitative discussions with 7 people with varying levels of journaling experience and 2 therapists about why and how they journal and if they don’t what’s been the blockers if any.
Insights
The qualitative interviews led to some interesting takeaways and I could see the strong connecting between therapy and journaling.
🤷♂️
Most people who don't journal, don't know how to start
🫣
People feel too vulnerable expressing their thoughts
🗒️
People in therapy were introduced to journaling by their therapists
👩⚕️
Therapists often recommend journaling as tool in CBT
🚨
People often use journaling as a crisis management tool
📖
People who journal often reflect and read past journals
Competitive Landscape
I studied some apps that exists in the journaling, mental health and note-taking categories. My goal with this step was to understand what features exist on the market and where there's space to add.
💡 Hover on the app icons to see my takeaways from each
HMWs -> App Features
Its time to synthesize research insights and map them to features we would want in the app. A session of card sorting later, we have the following features to focus on.
Wireframes
The focus of the wireframing excercise was to iterate quickly and test all the insights gathered from the research phase. I started with some low fidelity wireframes and then moved on to high fidelity ones. Here are some of the key screens.
Simple re-assuring empty states to get people started
Selecting from a simple range of emotions to help with the guided journaling feature
Guided journaling so people don't have to stare at an empty page
Auto generated notes to discuss in a therapy session
Therapist app to manage their clients and review their shared therapy notes
Therapists can view therapy notes generated by their clients journal entries (if shared)
The Final App
Presenting, Pour – an AI powered journaling app that helps people in therapy get over the fear of an empty page and optimise their sessions with the following features:
- Various modes of journaling – guided, prompts, free etc.
- AI powered guided journals.
- Auto generated discussion points and summaries from entries.
- Separate app for therapists to monitor clients.
The final flow
The folowing flow shows the complete user flow with journeys for both users and therapists.
💡 Go full screen to view this better
Visual identity
Since Pour is essentially a note taking app, I wanted the visual language of the app to be as simple as possible.
Key Flows
Adding Patients
Since the the app is recommended by therapists, they can easily add their patients to the app with a QR code. After scanning the code, the patient downlaods the app and is added to the therapist's list.
Guided journaling
Pour provides various modes of journaling. Guided journaling is one of them. It helps people get started with journaling by asking them to select from a range of emotions and then guiding them through the process.
Adding comments
Once an entry is made and shared, therapists get a push notification and can add comments to the entry.
Reading Comments
When a therapist adds a comment, the patient gets a a otification and they can review the comments before their next session. Only journal entries that are shared with the therapist are visible to them.
Session View
The session view is a tool for patients to review their auto generated notes and discussion points before a session. This helps them prepare for the session and get the most out of it. During a session they can also take notes and record/auto transcribe the session.
Outcomes
Since it's one of the first projects where I've worked on all ends of the product design spectrum including research, I've learnt a lot. Here are some nice numbers that still make me happy!
100%
of interviewed therapists would recommend Pour to their clients
150+
Signups on the interest form
Next steps
Being passionate about journaling and seeing the warm reception for this concept I have decided to take this project forward and make it a real working project!
💡 I'm currently building a revised version of this concept called Journi!
