Meadow

Creating a 0-1 digital therapeutic app aimed at helping patients experiencing depression in less than 2 months

Company: Big Health

Timeline: 5-6 weeks

Team size: ∼ 6 members

Role: Art Direction & Illustration

Depression is a common mental health issue affecting 1 in 5 people during their lifetime. Current digital solutions for depression lack effectiveness, mainly target consumers, and struggle with low user engagement.

Goal: Create an app that encourages daily use with a clinically proven approach called Behavioral Activation.

What is Behavioral Activation?

Behavioral Activation is a CBT Technique that allows people to break the cycle of withdrawal and low motivation by activating positive behaviors to increase positive emotions

Outcome

Early testing revealed that PHQ8 scores reduced from an average of 14.3 (moderate) to an average of 9.1 (mild and below the clinical cut off), indicating a significant improvement in depressive symptoms.

77% of users used the app for 2 or more days in their first week, in addition to 77% of users returning for the second week.

These early results showed lots of promise and proved to us that our concept and design was working!

Here were some direct quotes from users:

It’s encouraging and sweet. I like the visual of that. Such a good metaphor of growth and new life. My health goal has spotted a flower. It would be nice to see an animated version of where you started and where you are now.

That would be encouraging.

-Amanda

This is different from other apps. Usually it’s just a chart, this is different, and I really like that it’s the first thing I see when I open the app. It shows me that I’m putting in effort every day. I like the colors. It brings color to my life that day.

-Omy

Centered around the theme of a garden, users “plant a seed” for a focus area they care about, ensuring the goals we recommend will be relevant and meaningful to them. Whenever users check-in or complete an activity, they can watch their garden grow!

Grow your plants, grow yourself

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Grow your plants, grow yourself 〰️

My role: I created all 180 plant states from beginning to end. The inspiration was to take ordinary plants that we might recognize and create a twist at each step, so that users would be pleasantly surprised at each growth stage. I decided to choose a variety of plants; some that grew thick and sturdy, others that curved as they matured. I had a blast ideating and sketching these out, plants are such interesting subjects and some of them are really out there!

I also created all the spot illustrations displayed when navigating the onboarding and product experience. As well as creating spot illustrations shown in the Support tab, where users are informed about different techniques that can be used for a variety of situations such as overcoming negative thoughts and goal completion.