Role

UX Designer

Timeline

November 13, 2025

Project Type

Designathon (8 hours)

Tools/ Skills

Figma, Figjam, Market Research, User Research Prototyping,

MindMate

A health app designed for high-school students by a high-school student

Overview

As a high school student feeling overwhelmed by academics and the pressure of planning for my life after high-school, I realized many of my other peers were struggling with that same mental challenge. This inspired me to design a mental health app aimed to provide students with accessible support and resources to navigate their emotions and life stressors.

Research

Market Research

I looked at top mental-health apps and noticed they weren’t built with students in mind.

User Interviews

Understanding the target audience more

I surveyed 6 current high-school students and a previous graduate to gain more insight into this problem.
My research goal was to discover the key pain points in the existing counselling system at our school, and to explore current methods students use to deal with their stress and anxiety.
I created an affinity map to organize key-findings from the user surveys.

After synthesizing all the research, these were the key findings that shaped the direction of the solution:

100%

Students felt overwhelmed during high-school. Most of those students had no way to ease their stressors and anxiety

65%

Students had never utilized / heard of our existing school counsellors to access mental health resources

80%

Students preffered privacy over expressing their concerns and problems to a counsellor at school

From there, I created a insights and needs chart to sythesize my research after multiple one-on-one user interviews and quantitative surveys. This will help guide the direction of the project into clear design requirements

Insights

1. Community

Students value community in their lives, but sometimes can’t afford to spend time with them due to their academics

2. Resources

Students do not have resources to alleviate stressors in their lives

3. Flexibility

Students would appreciate alternative options to private counsellors, then talk to ones at school

Needs

1. Community

Stronger student community to overcome academic stressors easily and spend more time with family and friends.

2. Resources

A way to access resources that help identify stressors and provide ways to overcome them

3. Flexibility

Option for students to choose between in-person school counselling and online on-call therapists

User Persona's

Finally, I created a user persona to humanize the research and guide my design decisions moving forward

Emilie

Senior-Student, 18

Highschool in Calgary

Goal

I want to be able to balance my school work and social life better. I feel like I’m constantly drowning in assignments and don’t have time to actually enjoy my high-school years.

Frustration

I’m doing well in school but everything feels like a deadline, and I can’t get a hold of our school counsellors for a solution.

Interest

Unaware school counsellors were available
Easier ways to stay updated on school events

Mark

Freshman, 16

Highschool in Calgary

Goal

I want to stress less about what I’m going to do after high school and feel like I need some direction or clarity.

Frustration

I talked to school counsellors before but it didn’t help. I want help that actually listens to what I’m going through.

Interest

Would like digital tools that offer clear guidance
Uses tools to help plan his future
‍

Prototype & Insights

Lo-fidelity Wireframes

Usability Testing
‍

I ran 5 usability sessions where users navigated my prototype and shared what felt confusing or hard to use

Several sessions later, 8 major features needed to be reiterated upon before moving forward

Final Designs

High-Fidelity Designs

After continuous testing, iteration and extensive research and interviews, the final design took shape

Simplified layout with one primary focus area: Mood Tracker
Content grouped by importance (for easy navigation
Resources are secondary; not the first feature users see

Prioritized booking appointments as the main action to reduce cognitive load
Renamed from 'Search' to "Appointments" for clarity
Added short descriptions so students know who they're booking with and why

Removed resources to keep this page focused on conversations only
Renamed the section to "School Chats" instead of 'Student-led' for clearer purpose
Added descriptions for quick understanding

Design Concept

Reflection

What I'd do differently next time...

Explore technical feasibility

If this concept were to launch as an app, I would consider school policy before adding an announcement and chat feature into a real public-school system

More qualitative interviews

Next time, I would have conducted interviews with more than 6 participants to include more diverse perspectives and backgrounds into my research

Better adhere to WCAG guidelines

I found myself using gradients a bit too freely, and it hurt readability for some aspects of the app. Next time I would follow WCAG standards more strictly and keep the visuals cleaner