In this article, I explain an immense opportunity for Siri to dominate the mental health space and improve the overall mental health of Apple’s users. Additionally, I elaborate on how this new feature will look on release and in the future!
Thanks a ton to Sanaz Alexander for helping me draft this article!
Problem:
Users need a quick and easy way for people to track their mental health.
Mental health is positively correlated with productivity and happiness. On the other hand, neglecting mental health can have some serious consequences. Siri can help people with the cumbersome task of tracking mental health and attack the problem of productivity at its root.
Opportunity:
The mental health app industry has seen explosive growth in the past few years.
- Mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace won App of the Year on the App Store in 2017 and 2018.
- Over 10 million adults in the US have unmet mental health needs. (Mental Health America (MHA))
- 60% of MHA screeners had symptoms of moderate depression
With an outdated system for seeking mental health care, it’s no surprise that people are turning to apps on their devices for help. Siri, with its ease of use and robust natural language processing, seems to be perfectly positioned for this opportunity.
Goals:
1. Allow users to increase emotional intelligence and self-awareness through quick and easy tracking of their mental health.
2. Make users happier and more productive
Target Users and their Pain Points:
In this section, we will illustrate our target users with personas. This user segment is still relatively young but rapidly growing.
John is a 22-year-old college grad. He is an engineer at a large tech corporation and is exhausted after work. He wants to reduce anxiety but feels stuck.
- Pain Points: John struggles with mental health tracking that he can stick to. Typing is too cumbersome since he is exhausted after work. The few times he has stuck with an app, he was too tired to read over the reports.
- Goal: John wants an effortless way to track his mental health. He wants insights to be handed to him weekly, so he doesn’t need to scroll through his entries.
Elaine is a 36-year-old that struggles with many mental health issues. She tries very hard to track her issues.
- Pain Points: Elaine struggles to centralize all the data she gathered and to extract actionable insights.
- Goal: Elaine wants a wide array of trackers that she can switch in and out. She also wants insights on her data delivered to her weekly and wants one centralized place to see all the data.
Takeaways:
John and Elain are likely early adopters who expressed these key pain points:
- Make data input effortless.
- Provide a variety of trackers for different mental health needs
- Give insights on the collected data in an intuitively packaged report.
Features
- Effortless data input: This can be done using Siri’s existing speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) tools
- Provide weekly/monthly insights and a place to view this information: A new “Mental Health” category in the Health app is an intuitive location for this data.
- Provide trackers for different conditions: After consulting with mental health care professionals and conducting A/B testing, we can determine which trackers are the most useful.
Design and User Experience:
Objectives:
- Reduce user friction and keyboard-based input
- Deliver an uncomplicated user experience
- Provide support for different mental health issues
- Create a location for users to view inputted information
User Journey
We will be using a simple mood and cognitive distortions tracker that helps mitigate mood swings.
**Cognitive distortions are negative biases/ automatic thoughts that people have in responses to events. Studies show that they lead to emotional and behavioral responses. Tracking/ recognizing when they happen a great way to prevent mood swings. More info here. **
Step 1: Choose and learn about trackers
- Open the Health app provided by Apple.
- Under “Browse,” select the “Mental Health” section and review the 5–10 available trackers.
- Read descriptions and select appropriate tools. The user selects the “Mood and Cognitive Distortions tracker” to battle mood swings.
Step 2: Wake up Siri
- Voice: The user says, “Hey Siri, I want to track my mental health” to wake up Siri and bring up the list of mood trackers selected by the users.
- Manual: Hold the home/power button and do the same as above.
Step 3: Select tracker
- Siri prompts the user, “Sure. Which do you want to track?” and lists the trackers the user has selected and also provides a simple UI with the list of tackers.
- The user selects the “Mood and Cognitive Distortions” tracker.
Step 4: Input Data
This section will differ based on the type of tracker the user selects.
- Siri prompts the user, “How’s your mood?” and lists a few negative and positive moods for the user to select. The user can select one of the provided moods or say their own. Siri can understand if this mood is positive or negative.
- If a user selects a negative emotion/mood, Siri then prompts the user, “Which cognitive distortion did you experience?” and lists a few common cognitive distortions (ex. mind-reading, magnification, polarization, etc.). Users can respond by voice or select by tapping.
- Users can also ask Siri to remind them of a cognitive distortion’s definition, or they can view it by long-tapping the UI.
Step 5: Reports and Insights
- Siri will notify that the user can view some weekly insights through a popup or a notification on the lock screen.
- On click, the user will be taken to the Health app, where they can view trends based on the data Siri collected.
- Users can also view this data at any point by just visiting the health app.
From this particular tracker, we can calculate trends that show mood fluctuations throughout the day and show which cognitive distortions are tied to each. Wireframes are provided below.
Measuring Success
In this section, we determine the metrics that indicate success. Define the goal, define the user actions that support our goal, and determine metrics that capture these actions (GAME Framework).
Goal
Improve our user’s emotional intelligence and self-awareness through quick and easy mental health tracking.
Actions
- Inputting data into trackers
- Opening insights once ready
Metrics to Measure Success:
- # of queries to Siri asking for trackers
- % of completed inputs into the trackers
- Average time to complete data input into trackers.
- Feature abandonment — how long does it take before the user stops/gives?
- The ratio of inputs that indicate a happy mood vs. negative mood
Evaluation
There are some pitfalls with these metrics. For instance, # queries to Siri asking for trackers are contingent on how sensible the user’s query is or how good Siri’s NLP is. Feature abandonment and # queries to Siri can provide a false negative result. If a user believes their mental state has stabilized, they may no longer need this feature for the time being.
Implementation and Challenges:
Teams
4 teams are required for implementing this project.
1. AI/Machine Learning: Make sure Siri understands when a user is asking a question to access our new feature.
2. Full Stack Engineers: Build the UI and store user data after input and ensure code correctness (QA/QC).
3. UI/UX Designers: Create an intuitive UI. Create simple trackers that require only 1–2 taps and no keyboard input. Insights provided by the data must also be presented clearly.
4. Data Analysts/ Market research: Research what kind of surveys/ trackers are most effective. View analytics is mentioned in the previous section, to measure the quality of our feature. Analysts extrapolate the results collected from this data for success metrics.
Challenges
- User Education: Another big issue is how informed users are on mental health care terms. For instance, the general public will not be familiar with the definition of all 10 cognitive distortions. We either inform the user about the subject or use our own terms to describe mental health care vocabulary to be more understandable.
Future Vision and Improvements:
We foresee this feature to pave the road for Siri to become a more emotionally intelligent AI.
- Adding an Emotional Component to Siri: Based on prior inputs into trackers and a more sophisticated analysis of voice undulation and vocabulary, Siri can predict users' emotions and mental states throughout the day. Siri can help users by suggesting mindfulness activities and physical exercise throughout the day.
- Collaboration with Mental Health Care Providers: Apple devices allow for tracking physical health records such as clinical vitals, immunizations, and lab results. Apple could pivot our new mental health tracking feature in a clinical direction to help therapists treat their patients and keep a record of progress
