During early exploration of existing mental health applications, a consistent pattern emerged:
Users were not overwhelmed by a lack of features — they were overwhelmed by unclear structure.
Across evaluated applications, participants reported:
Ambiguous icon-only navigation, weak confirmation feedback, and inconsistent accessibility implementation increased cognitive load and reduced trust.
This project reframed the challenge:
How might we improve emotional reassurance by strengthening structural clarity?
The project followed a structured research-through-design model.
Multiple mental health applications were evaluated against established usability principles and accessibility best practices.
Recurring issues included:
Structural ambiguity was more damaging than missing features.
Six participants completed structured tasks including:
Observed behaviours included:
Participants frequently verbalised uncertainty, even when technically completing tasks correctly.
Interview transcripts revealed three dominant themes:
This insight shifted the redesign focus from feature expansion to interaction clarity.
Users did not need more functionality. They needed reassurance.
Structural ambiguity creates hesitation. Predictable interaction reduces anxiety.
The redesign was guided by four core principles:
Users should always know where they are and how to move forward.
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Limit simultaneous decisions and visual noise.
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Users should always know where they are and how to move forward.
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Accessibility embedded at structural level — not retrofitted later.
The onboarding experience was redesigned using progressive disclosure. Each screen introduces a single structured prompt with clear forward progression, reducing early decision fatigue.
* 5/6 participants completed onboarding without clarification
* Reduced first-use hesitation
* Improved perceived flow clarity
Icon-only navigation was replaced with clearly labelled bottom tabs. Persistent navigation across all screens improved spatial predictability and reduced search effort.
The chatbot interface was redesigned to prioritise clarity over conversational novelty.
Rather than simulating therapeutic authority, the design emphasised transparency and structured guidance.
Journaling was re positioned within primary navigation and redesigned to reduce friction.
These changes directly addressed discoverability and cognitive effort challenges identified in testing.
The chatbot interface was redesigned to prioritise clarity over conversational novelty.
This bridges self-guided support with visible professional access, reinforcing legitimacy without overwhelming users.
Prototype validation demonstrated measurable behavioural improvements compared to baseline observations.
Users were not overwhelmed by a lack of features — they were overwhelmed by unclear structure.
Observed Impact:
Participants consistently described the redesigned interface as:
A deliberate decision was made not to introduce additional wellbeing features during redesign.
Although research identified opportunities for expanded AI tracking and gamification, prioritising
foundational
usability ensured structural friction was resolved first.
This prevented feature complexity from masking interaction weaknesses and positioned the system for
scalable
future enhancement.