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January 2024 - May 2024
Background: MiMente is Latin America’s first digital therapy clinic! They can serve B2C, but they are focused on serving B2B (corporations that want to offer therapy to their employees). Their first customers are in Mexico, but they seek to grow their reach in the United States by offering services to the U.S. Hispanic population – a total market of 63.7 million people as of July 2022.
To enter the U.S. market successfully, they wanted to understand more about their target market, market entry strategy, alternative solutions, product-market fit, barriers to entry, and differentiation. As a team of Human-Centered Designers, we worked for 12 weeks to help illuminate these unknowns and advise MiMente's approach to entering the U.S.
Role: Human-Centered Designer
Team: Jihyun and Alison,
2 fellow design students
step 1/6
Background Research
We began our project by learning about the mental healthcare system and the way the various stakeholders are involved.
LITERATURE REVIEW
finding key trends and information relevant to the future of mental healthcare
SYSTEMS UNDERSTANDING
mapping the current system surrounding mental healthcare to understand the various stakeholders and what is being exchanged
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
surveying key competitors to gain insight into their products, marketing, and partnership tactics to identify opportunities for valuable differentiation
key findings from our research
Individuals who provide psychotherapy to persons in California are required to be licensed in California
Wellness coaches or alternative healers may be a loophole to U.S. legal restrictions
Differentiations: Spanish-speaking providers, highly qualified candidates, algorithm that matches by provider specialty, address socio-economic barriers, custom platform for latino community
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Opportunities: rural areas with few therapists, safety-net hospitals, immigrants, K-12 school partnerships
step 2/6
Empathy Interviews
After learning about the mental health service industry through background research, we conducted empathy interviews with stakeholders to gather insight into their perspectives, needs, behaviors, and preferences.
SYNTHESIS
unpacking raw interview data into themes to gain insights that guide our design process and inform decision-making
We discovered that our average user prefers a US-based therapist with a similar identity, offers hybrid services and speaks both English and Spanish. Many of our users also value guaranteed privacy and someone who specializes in their needs.
After speaking to experts in the field, some common insights appeared:
"Wellness" may be a more culturally acceptable term than therapy.
There is a high need for mental health services in the educational space, especially after the pandemic.
Cultural competency can be just as important is language translation for meaningful sessions.
Through journey mapping, we discovered that the majority of our users have a difficult experience when first seeking therapy because of barriers like affordability, family acceptance, and cultural stigma.
step 3/6
Defining Our User
We created a persona from our user research to represent a larger, hypothesized group of users. This would help provide direction for design decisions and build empathy for our users.
step 4/6
Ideation
Using techniques like "Illegal, Immoral, & Impossible", Brand-Inspired Ideas, Lightening Demos, and Mindmapping, we came up with over 100 ideas that would help solve for our user.
step 5/6
Rapid Prototyping + Testing
We chose 4 promising ideas and built a low-fidelity prototype for each of them. We used a "show don't tell" strategy so our users could interact and provide meaningful feedback.
USER TESTING
After receiving mixed feedback during prototype testing, we did more research to find out what our users really wanted. We did this by conducting surveys, card sorting activities, and having our users paper prototype their own solutions.
We found that more than half of our users would be open to trying alternative wellness services in addition to therapy and would be more comfortable discussing spiritual healing with their families than therapy.
In an ideal situation, most of our users would have some sort of blend of therapy and coaching services, with specialists working together to provide a holistic healing approach.
step 6/6
Iteration on Iteration
We chose 4 promising ideas and built a low-fidelity prototype for each of them. We used a "show don't tell" strategy so our users could interact and provide meaningful feedback.
EXPLORING TRADITIONAL HEALING
Our research showed a strong desire for traditional healing services in addition to Western therapy. We created a paper-prototype for a platform that offers both services to quickly gather feedback on usability, content, and satisfaction.
MAKING IT DIGITAL + INTERACTIVE
We made our next prototype digital and interactive, incorporating the feedback we received in the first iteration. Changes included switching "quiz" to "assessment" for a more professional feel, showing the types of alternative healing available, and giving a short description of each service.
INTENTIONAL LANGUAGE CHOICES
Some users felt averse to the term "spiritual" because of negative personal experiences they've had with Christianity and their identities. We decided to change "spiritual" to "holistic" healing to be more inclusive and comprehensive.
Additionally, we did some brand identity exploration, creating a color separation between therapy and healing services to uphold the credibility of the therapy platform.
final design
We landed on a platform that allows users to choose between therapy and holistic healing, preview available services with transparent pricing, and find providers in their area for the service of interest.
We presented to the founders in Mexico and they were delighted by the idea of blending traditional healing with modern therapy!
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