Growing mental health support for children of immigrants

Project Overview

For children of immigrants, mental health and therapy are important discussions but may be ignored due to cultural stigmas. Brown Girl Therapy is a platform founded by Sahaj Kohli to provide educational resources for anyone balancing bicultural identities. The development of a mobile app will aid in enhancing community connections.

Role

User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction design, UI design, Prototyping & Testing

Completed as a student case study for DesignLab’s UX Academy. Content on app is sourced from Brown Girl Therapy.

Step 1: Research

In order to better understand the mental health and wellness industry, and users I identified the following research methods to better understand the problem.

• Secondary research

• User interviews

• Competitive analysis

This project began with secondary research on the market, and the industry, which allowed me to better understand current mental health industry and resources aimed at supporting children of immigrants’ mental health. In addition to that, it allowed me to learn about the messaging of mental health and wellness apps to support users. With this research, I began to understand that there are a variety of general services available for mental health which hold space for community and discussion. However, there was not a product aimed at supporting the specific needs and experience of a first generation immigrant.

Brown Girl Therapy (BGT) is a leader in uplifting first generation immigrant struggles and places heavy emphasis on community. Rather, mental wellness and healing is a byproduct of engaging with a community. With this knowledge, I wanted to identify why community engagement was pivotal in the BGT space. I continued to research the user and sought to understand the user’s experience with BGT and if bicultural communities impact their mental health and wellness journeys.

Understanding the user

Living with two cultures can provide holistic perspectives but it also has its fair share of challenges. For children of immigrants, growing up in a culture different from their parents means they are consistently straddling between two worlds. At times, familial values may contradict personal or environmental values and that can impact one’s mental health negatively.

In the United States, first generation immigrants may take on a caregiver role for their parents, assuming responsibilities such as translating or taking the lead in certain matters. These experiences are unanimous amongst children of immigrants, regardless of ethnicity. This balance between two cultures and two systems of living has lended itself to a third culture that is shared between bicultural folks. Mental health and therapy is often overlooked in this community and finding therapists or resources that are educational and validating of these experiences is difficult. Spaces such as Brown Girl Therapy emphasize therapy and break down the unique struggles of having a bicultural identity amongst community.

I wanted to empathize with the user and address the topic with sensitivity, so it was important to ask about their general comfortability discussing mental health and wellness. Based on their responses, all users were open to discussion and told me about how they navigate living within two cultures. Key questions such as “is it important for you to find community as it relates to your bicultural identity?” allowed me to understand the role of community in their lives and on their mental health journeys. In addition, I asked about their views on mental health apps and what spaces make them feel validated. These points were addressed during user interviews.

User interviews

Four participants who are first generation immigrants were interviewed. The participants ranged from being familiar with Brown Girl Therapy to frequent users of the account. At the beginning of the interview, a usability test of the current Instagram account was conducted to define users’ motivations and pain points. The participants were asked about their perspective on bicultural community connections in digital and physical spaces.

The goals for the interview included:

• Identifying themes across bicultural experiences

• Exploring why/if user utilizes wellness apps

• Identifying which platforms user finds community related to identity

• Learning pain points and successes with using bicultural identity platforms

• Identifying what kind of features are important to this user
  
  

The key findings for the interview included:

• Users are motivated to use Brown Girl Therapy as it is specifically speaks to the first generation immigrant experience. Users describe that they feel seen using the platform and validated in their thoughts and feelings.

• The user needs to feel supported by their community, easily find resources and education about mental wellness. Shared struggles and challenges with having two cultures can make these experiences feel less daunting when one can connect with others. This support is extremely important to find a community where the user doesn’t have to explain their perspective and are just understood.

• User pains include limited access to members of their community (in person or online) and stigmas in their cultures discussing mental wellness or therapy. It may be difficult to connect with others living with a shared experience if one doesn’t live in proximity to a bicultural community. In addition, users are not aware of many digital platforms where they can find bicultural communities.

Empathy Map

Once the interviews were completed, an empathy map was completed to find commonalities from the users’ answers. An empathy map shows that users place important emphasis on challenging traditions in their communities. Users’ pain points with Brown Girl Therapy include that it is visually overwhelming and they struggle to locate specific content for their needs.

Persona

Data from user interviews and the empathy map influenced the making of this persona. The persona is a first generation immigrant, living with a Hispanic and Arab culture. This persona deems it difficult to find first generation bicultural community members and wants to uplift mental health awareness in her cultures.

Peer support in the market

Once I understood the user, it became clearer what their needs were, and that includes wanting to connect with others who are bicultural and to destigmatize discussions on mental health and wellness. As for the mental health and wellness app industry, there is not an exclusive space for these discussions, yet many apps provide therapists to speak with.

While Brown Girl Therapy encourages its members to seek professional help if needed, the platform is an introduction for many to mental health. The educational infographics provide personal awareness of mental health and may act as a stepping stone to seek help which is easier done in a supportive environment. 

This is why community is emphasized in mental health spaces, as positive empathy enhances one’s mental state and well being. Peer support has been clinically proven to improve quality of life and boost self esteem. There are a variety of general mental wellness and therapy apps on the market which emphasize these practices. However, it is important to note that a majority of these apps provide featured content that is only accessed through paid subscriptions which may be a barrier to access. 

Competitive analyses

To further analyze the market, two competitive analyses were completed; the first looking at therapy and mental wellness platforms specifically aimed at first generation immigrants and the second was looking at existing therapy and mental wellness apps. The platforms on Instagram are more accessible as they are free, however, the apps are strongly rooted in allowing users to be a part of a larger community and a variety of in depth discussions.

Step 2: Ideate

Based on my conversations with users, and an understanding of the market, I was at a point to begin developing the information architecture. This led to the development of a roadmap to prioritize features and user flows to plan how a user would navigate the app to complete specific tasks.

Feature roadmap

Many of the “must have” features are supported by the market and competitive analyses. Implementing a “community” feature was very important to allow a space for open, honest dialogue between the app’s members.

User flows

The feature roadmap, along with secondary research of the market and Brown Girl Therapy’s current Instagram account influenced this user flow and its navigation. User flows were developed to test out how a user would start a thread, join a community and a find a therapist. As Brown Girl Therapy contains many resources such as links to podcasts, articles, infographics and a therapist database, it was important to establish intuitive and organized information architecture.