Magnolia

Inspiration

We observed that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, issues regarding mental health rose exponentially due to the sudden isolation and lifestyle changes. Despite these adverse health effects, there still lacked acknowledgement and conversation about mental health in the Asian-American community, particularly amongst older generations such as Asian immigrant parents. This is largely due to the continuous stigma around discussions of mental health and how it has been culturally perceived. Thus, we seek to design a space that helps combat this cultural stigma.

What it does

Our design seeks to address four pain points we gleaned from interviewing 5 members of our target population. First is the existence of mental health stigma in the Asian community and the need to “save face” regard issues concerning mental health. Second, our interviewees demonstrated a limited understanding of mental health language and how to discuss mental health. Third, we observed they often sought more independent, non-traditional approaches to taking care of their mental health. Finally, being of an older generation, there is a greater learning curve to technology for them, which makes accessibility a higher priority.

Thus, we decided to focus on three key features: the onboarding process, which is designed to be simple and guide users through a registration process with accessibility provided via language support. Second is a live chat system for the user to communicate with a mental health professional in real time for any questions concerning mental health, be it personal or more general in nature. Third, we wanted to provide informative articles around different topics in mental health, which would introduced easily to the user via a daily push notification. The app includes a built in anonymity option, which can help mitigate the stigma surrounding mental health.