Cope
Unaddressed trauma symptoms often develop into chronic mental health problems, how may we use technology to self-monitor and increase accessibility to mental healthcare?
Cope is an AI application that uses a wearable device (Copilot) to document and analyze triggers to suggest coping actions suited to individuals who are impacted by traumatic events.
Links to Deliverables:
How It Works
My Role
My Role
As the research lead, I created user studies and conducted user interviews, collated qualitative and quantitative data and created low and mid-fidelity UI designs based on user feedback.
Skills
User Research
Design Strategy
UI/UX Design
Data Collection
In our survey, out of 102 people, we found that 94% stated that they knew someone around them who are currently impacted by a mental illness and 74.5% of the pool of survey respondents stated that they themselves experienced a traumatic event.
94%
new someone around them who are currently impacted by a mental illness
75.4%
they themselves experienced a traumatic event
Key Insights
It was difficult to recruit participants to talk about something so personal, thus, we adjusted research protocols. For people who prefer not speaking in person about their experience with trauma, we sent out qualitative survey questions allowing them to answer the questions at their convenience.
In addition, we reassured participants by not recording personal data and securing any information shared with the latest encryption available to us.
1 / Social Circles
The support system around people affects the way they approach coping with trauma.
2 / Impact
Response to triggers affects a person’s physical health as well as their social, academic, and professional life in the long run.
3 / Individualized
Coping methods vary and are very specific to each individual. What worked for one person might not work for another.
Trauma varies greatly, it could be PTSD from being in a War or a bad car accident. Trauma is used to describe distressing event(s) that may have long lasting, harmful effect on a person's physical and emotional health.
Mental health treatment is often an after-thought but this can be dangerous in the long term.
Narrowing Scope
As trauma-coping is very personalized, we broadly characterized people by the willingness to ask for help after experiencing a traumatic event.
We also noted trends in difficulties that people face while asking for help.
Cope focuses on the users willing to ask for help but perhaps lack the resources, knowledge or finances to do so.
Personas
Based on the data gathered, we created four types of people who would be our initial adopters and power users.
How might we provide a safe environment for self-motivators and encourage self-awareness, initiative action in trauma recovery while reducing the negative effects of trauma symptoms in everyday life?
UI Iteration With User Feedback
I led multiple rounds of user testing on the digital app and physical prototype. With user feedback, I changed design strategy and recommended UI changes, click through to see some of the documented changes we made!
AI Suggestions
With data collected on Copilot, Cope will use AI to cross-examine data sets with public local data such as noise levels and potential triggers, providing science-backed recommendations on ways to improve trauma triggers.
Tracking
Encouraging the recording of symptoms and triggers can help individuals raise their level of awareness, find patterns, and initiate their road to recovery.
Personalized Experience
Trauma affects everyone differently, users can use personalization features to customize their road to recovery.
Our Team
Like any other UX project, it is never a one-man show, please check out their work as well if you enjoyed our collaboration!
