Week 22

The last week in March meant that my user experience experiment was drawing to a close. I made up post experiment questions and went to visit each participant socially distanced style. Even though the I prepared a set of questions for the participants to fill out, I felt the most benefit came from the discussion that we entailed when I met them.

Anna – 75yo female

Anna confessed that she struggled to interact with the book but spoke about how she never uses a diary or a journal anyway and that she is pre-set in her ways about life. I totally understood this and expect this outcome for this age range.

Debbie – 42yo female

Debbie enjoyed her experience; her favourite aspect was the positivity within the book she admitted it was good to focus on the positives even if there were negatives in her life and the book forced her to think that way. As she works full time and also has a family, she struggled to give the book her full attention, but after speaking to everyone I do understand that the book was far too demanding especially for people with no mental health issues. She mentioned on the questionnaire that her mental stability and productivity had increased, and she liked the layout and content of the book.

Gregor – 17yo male

“The CBT for me were too much but for other people who were into that stuff it would be good. It has helped with getting more things done in the day, I am more productive, and I like how I can visually see my plans and to do lists”

Jamie – 23yo male

“The inside looked a bit like a text book and was word heavy, the idea is good with planning and self help merged together.”

I also gave a sixth journal to a 49-year-old male, but he failed to participate with the experiment.

This week was the mark 2 presentations, there is not much to show for this process as I spent the week creating content for the book and creating the presentation. I will show the results below:

Slide 1

Hi

Slide 2

This is what I have produced for my mark 2 prototype, as you can see it has developed a lot aesthetically since mark 1 and there are also some major changes in terms of content, but I’ll get into that throughout this presentation.

Slide 3

So as my project is based on CBT, this type of therapy is used for treatment for a range of mental health issues. In my findings I learned that the format for CBT is pretty much the same for every mental health issue but the way the user interacts with it is different. For example, the worksheet in the top right corner is an exercise called exposure hierarchy pyramid, when someone has a fear of something, in this book they will acknowledge that, then write on the pyramid tasks or steps that they will complete to get over that hurdle in their life. For people with anxiety their goal would maybe be to speak in front of a big crowd, or someone with OCD their goal may be to only check that the door is locked once before going to bed rather than 10 times, so with the pyramid they will document the process needed to achieve this. But it can also be used for something simple like a fear of spiders, CBT is so versatile. There are different topics that CBT covers like how to set goals and express emotions, so it is useful for everyone.

Slide 4

I handed my mark 1 out to 6 different people for the month of March and the biggest thing that I have taken from their feedback is that they thought the book was too demanding. I thought this was an extremely fair statement because in the mark 1 book there was x2 CBT exercises x2 activities and a page every day to document your thoughts feelings and plans. So, looking back I agree that it was too much. This time I have reduced it, so instead of a page a day the planning section is now displayed as a week view with space to create a to do list on the top left corner. Then the CBT section will be reduced to once a week as well as 1 activity and 1 relevant quote relating to what technique was learned at that week’s CBT. On the screen here is what a typical week will look like. I managed to speak to a psychologist about the way that this book would use CBT and she said that it was a strong use of the technique. If the user does complete the book, then that’s them learned 52 CBT techniques that they can then apply to their everyday life no matter how extreme their problem may be. Doing it in this format also means that the book has been reduced dramatically, before it was to be roughly 600 pages which would make a really fat book and since it is A5, it would look really out of proportion but now it is will be at least half the size which I am happier with.

Slide 5

As promise, I have done a good amount of work on the graphics and layout for the inside of the book. I have taken a huge chunk of my inspiration from Japanese culture; in Japanese culture their design style is based on nature and I found a quote that applies ‘celebrating beauty in imperfections’. On screen is some of my inspiration pictures, I love the natural element I find it is so calming, the brush strokes, colour palette and illustrations together will create a nice environment in my book.

Slide 6

The way that I have binded this prototype is also inspired by Japanese culture; I have used the stab stitch technique. To my surprise it held so well, and the materials are all-natural which sticks to the theme. Also, all the materials are recyclable which I love because it gives me the fear using so much paper. The thing that started me with the Japanese theme was when I was trying to come up with a name for the journal. I came across the Japanese term Hansei which means self-reflection or to acknowledge one’s own mistake and to pledge improvement, which in my opinion fits perfectly with the concept of CBT. The book isn’t actually A5, it is the size of a Chu-hon book which is a popular book size for travel, cooking and other how to books.

Slide 7

Here’s some examples of some pages of the book, I have most of the content ready, so the next part is to apply it into the graphical layout. The graphics are probably not perfect yet but since that’s really the only thing I have left to work on till the final hand in then it will be good. On the quotes page I took inspiration from anime for the fonts and the left to right up and down movement. Actually, all the fonts are Asian inspired. I may characterise my book into the 4 seasons in terms of the colours and illustrations.

Slide 8

Here’s just a wee video of the mark 2 prototype and me demonstrating how sturdy it is. I will hand out this prototype to another 6 people for the month of April to gather feedback from them also.

I have decided to do another set of user testing on the mark 2 prototype; therefore, I spent the rest of the week creating 6 more booklets that I can hand out for the month of march. They contain a 4-week block of the journal which they can start on Monday 5th. The journals will be given to again a wide range of ages groups and people with known mental health issues. One participant will be the same as the first set of user testing so I can get feedback on the progress made from mark 1.