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Huddle

Prioritizing mental health check-ins with healthcare workers

Huddle was part of an informatics course where my team aimed to create a product that addressed the mental health crisis of healthcare workers and their workplace.

Having worked in a hospital myself before the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw the mental toll and lack of support among healthcare workers firsthand. This inspired me to propose this topic, as the pandemic has undoubtedly exasperated this frequently overlooked problem.

Duration

Oct - Nov, 2020

Team

Anna Shi

Jonathan Trinh

Key contributions

User research

Interaction design
Prototyping

Visual systems

THE PROBLEM

Healthcare workers are vulnerable to burnout from their high-stress jobs, reporting high rates of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD. A recent global survey from KPMG found 59% of healthcare workers said their mental health had worsened due to the pandemic - that’s compared to 51% in industries outside of healthcare.

DESIGN QUESTION

How might we support the mental health of healthcare workers and destigmatize conversations in the workplace?

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THE SOLUTION

Sparking conversations

Inspired by today's care team practices of huddle boards, where teams track progress and give updates, Huddle brings mental health in the workplace to light and provides a safe space for people to reach out and find resources.

THE HIDDEN CRISIS

RESEARCH

The hidden mental health crisis 

My first approach was to conduct a literature review of studies and news articles about healthcare workers and their experience with mental health in the workplace. This helped me empathize more with doctors, nurses, and their stories rather than relying on my own experiences in the hospital. It was clear that these issues were often ignored when patients' wellbeing are prioritized.

Primary research

I conducted 2 surveys about mental health in the workplace, one targeted at the general public and the other one at healthcare workers. The healthcare survey received 55 responses from healthcare workers of various positions, many of whom provided anecdotes of their experience in hospitals. On top of that, we interviewed 3 healthcare workers to gather more in-depth answers on current administration support, workplace culture, and how they take care of themselves. 

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I made user personas to summarize our findings (click to enlarge):

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I work for a hospital system. Close to 4/5 months ago I requested a consult with a therapist through our hospital official website and “doctor request” forms. I have yet to receive a response. That needs to change.

"What does your current admin do to provide mental health support, if any? Have there been any changes since the COVID-19 pandemic began?"

What is your current position?

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1 in 4

admin/HR/managers provided zero mental health resources and support

If there’s a critical incident, we can get “Critical incident stress management” otherwise we have to seek out our own help because the hospital mental health support is difficult to get in touch with.

Free food on occasion. Tons of emails about burnout and increasing joy, but zero actual action.

I was personally punched in the face on at least 5 occasions, broke up bloody fights, and was bitten (by covid positive psych patients) on that floor. Our hospital's generous recognition of this struggle was to announce they would cut all contributions to our 401k retirement accts. No additional pay. In terms of mental health support? I believe there is one flyer about "resilience during abnormal events" in our HR department. Basically just says "hey be strong and maybe take on a few more shifts please!"

I think we have an EAP, but I’m not sure because it’s never advertised. No appreciable changes since COVID.

Affinity map with key trends in the surveys and interviews

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Administration doesn't even support nurses when they get suddenly punched in the face, with the CEO stating "this is what you signed up for". I don't even hope for any concerns over our mental health. I would like a new administration... who at least pretends to be in our corner.

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A web based zoom style meeting...offered during work hours with no real way to attend, de-personified, and public.

Nothing specific, however our head physician always like to remind us to take our breaks and “don’t work too hard” but he very genuine and sincere when he says this and he truly means it.

Current convos about mental health are either nonexistent or superficial/jokes. Many find it hard to speak up because of how coworkers respond.

32.7% reported feeling down/stressed/depressed every day

71% reported that their co-workers either never or only occasionally checked in on their mental wellbeing

Research insights

01

Many healthcare workers want to have more open conversations about mental health, but the current work environment often discourages it due to fear of being seen as less competent and ridicule from co-workers.

02

Many expressed that understanding and knowing their coworkers’ mental state as a team can allow them to better lend help to one another.

03

Many workers go through similar coping methods to de-stress, including exercise, relaxing activities, smoking/drinking, and ranting.  

04

Most current admins don’t provide any mental health support, but some include counseling services, free food, and online resources. Not a lot of help to fight against stigma or offer any long-term care for mental health.

Exploring current solutions

I conducted competitive analysis with my team on several existing products that healthcare workers use, primarily mindfulness apps. While they all provided short-term techniques to cope with stress, the products fell short in facilitating conversations in the workplace. We concluded that for our use case, a team app was the most feasible solution to incorporate into the already busy lives of healthcare workers. 

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Information architecture

RE-FOCUSING INFO ARCHITECTURE

Before diving into wireframes, I wanted to categorize our main features into this map to visualize how the app could fit into a healthcare worker's routine. I also used this as an opportunity to discuss with the team as to how the interactions were serving workers' needs and habits. However, the iteration below proved to be straying away from our research.

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Re-focusing our main features

In review, I did not move forward in this direction because -
 

  1. Features like "virtual care package" did not align with our goals, as communicating through decorated images already existed through Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
     

  2. We did not want to disrupt the regular workflow of healthcare workers, yet in-app messaging would add another potential barrier for users to reach out because they're not used to using it and prefer their own existing routines

 

I went back to researching existing care team communication methods and was inspired by "huddle boards" that teams use to discuss goals, tasks, and propose new ideas/suggestions. Using this framework healthcare workers were familiar with, I redesigned our main features and wireframes below.

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THE DELIVERABLE

Design solution

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Wellness Check-ins

To open up conversations, Huddle prompts the user to fill in daily/weekly surveys (depending on the care team’s routine).

 

These interactive surveys will ask about their mood, feelings, successes, struggles, and ways that their coworkers can help them in the upcoming days with anonymity, protecting workers privacy.

Team Status Updates

Care teams are provided an overview of how their team is doing with a summary of the top insights from the survey.

These can be utilized during team discussions and comes with a voluntary individual status tab that allows for notification reminders to check in with struggling coworkers when convenient for the user.

These 1:1 check-ins continues the mental health conversation outside of team meetings, but in a more intimate interaction.

One-stop Resources

The profile tab provides insight on mood trends for the user. To mitigate a lack of resources across administrations, Huddle compiles free, accessible ways to seek help, whether through hotlines, apps, or wellness exercises.

NEXT STEPS

Next steps

Given our time frame, it was a good call to spend a few weeks on purely reaching out to healthcare workers to hear their insights because that was what ultimately brought our app together in its concept. However, in continuing this project, it would be vital to conduct usability testing with our prototype, on top of observational research of the app in a hospital setting.

 

There are many more research questions to consider, including:

  1. How might this system be smoothly integrated into existing care team meetings? What might that look like with the busy routines of healthcare workers?

  2. Do different demographics (i.e. age) play a role in how willing healthcare workers might adopt a digital solution?

  3. What are healthcare workers' opinions on sharing their thoughts anonymously, and how open are they to expressing their moods to the team?

  4. How might hospital administrations use the insights collected to promote a healthier work environment that addresses mental health directly?

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