Overview

CBT Thought Diary is a thought-journaling mobile app guided by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The founder of the app, Eddie Liu, approached our team with a goal to increase user engagement. The purpose of CBT Thought Diary is to help people manage stress by reflecting on their thoughts and bringing people clarity to self-understanding.

The Problem

The statistics chart shows a 16% drop in user retention from week 1 to week 4.

The Goal

The redesign aims to increase user engagement and by streamlining user flow and refining UI design while ensuring business and user goal alignments.

My Role

Lead UX Researcher. Interaction Designer

Tools

Figma . Google Docs . Miro . Zoom . Trello . Slack

Scope

3 Weeks Sprint. Me + UI designer + founder

 
 

Design Challenge

“ How might we help users to reflect their thoughts effectively, so they can gain better understandings of themselves and strengthen emotional functions. ”

 
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Research

 

“ I Journal to Manage My Emotions and Feelings ”

To discover user needs, goals, frustrations, and behaviors, we conducted 10 user interviews, focusing on people who have the habit of journaling. Due to the time constraints, we had a mix of first users and current and journalers.

Key takeaway:

  • Journal to improve mental health

  • Benefit from structure & guidance

  • Difficulty self-regulating thoughts

 

Identify Hidden Pain Points

To identify the pain points of the original app design, we conducted 5 task analyses and highlighted elements that were causing friction during the user journey below.

 
 
 
 

I need an Intuitive and Engaging way to reflect my thoughts Efficiently.

Tracy is the composite character, which was created based on interviews and the current user demographic chart provided by the stakeholder. To fulfill our client’s requests of streamlining onboarding and increasing user engagement, our team focused on first-time users. The persona was referred to throughout our research and design process to ensure all decisions were made intentionally with CBT Thought Diary user needs in mind.

 

Primary Persona - Our stakeholder provided us the google analytics chart, so we were able to recognize that 68.3% users are Caucasian female from age 18 to 24.

 
 
 

Feature Design Inspirations

My contribution as a lead researcher:

  • Conducted task, audit, Pluses & Deltas research on all apps

  • Highlighted features that met user needs

  • Integrated findings into design planning

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Direct Competitors: stoic., MoodNotes, Jour, Daylio
Indirect Competitors: Headspace, Calm, Youper, Woebot

Synthesizing method

I walked through each app, created site maps, marked elements that encourage user engagement and streamline user flow, then converted findings into design recommendations.

 
 
 
 

Design Solution

 

Streamlined User Flows

 
 
 
  • By adding “ learn more” action buttons to prevent long-boarding fatigue.

 
 
 
 
  • By adding an entry summary after users journal creations to help them gain an overview of their thoughts and emotions

  • By shifting the reminder page from onboarding to the end of the journal creation to increase users’ desire to commit to the reminder

 
 
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Brand Voice: Dr. Fauci

To set a design tone to reflect the structured and guided journal process, we picked Dr, Fauci as the brand voice, as our client stated the CBT Thought Diary’s brand voice is professional, scientific, and down-to-earth.

 

Synthesizing Design

With our insights from the discovery phase, we started to sketch potential redesign solutions individually. Then we regrouped together to highlight elements from each frame.
By utilizing the synergy, we were able to actualize refined user flows and develop intuitive interfaces.

Progress indicator Summary

Skippable onboarding Guiding Prompts

 
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Uncover and Clarify Confusion

We conducted 13 usability testing and affinity mapped actions, hesitations, and errors of participants. Following are the key takeaways:

TASK 1: Walk through the onboarding process

Results:

  • 54% of users glossed over bulky text blocks

  • 69% of users skipped the “Learn More” option

  • 85% of users experienced difficulty finding the “Skip For Now” option on the subscription screen

TASK 2: Show me how you would create your first journal entry

Results:

  • 77% of users signed up for Daily Reminders when prompted post-entry completion

  • 46% of users experienced difficulty understanding which items were clickable

  • 54% of users experienced confusion responding to prompts

 

Iteration

 

First Hi-fi -> Second Hi-fi iteration

My contribution as a UX Designer:

  • Pointed out confusions user encountered on each screen

  • Made recommendations on UX writing and feature design

  • Refined UI elements to emphasize action indicators

 

Onboarding

 
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Subscription - “Skip for Now” option visible

 

Journal Entry Creation

 

Onboarding - clear & concise text

 

Crop-off distortion - scroll indication

Default “Help” - well-structured guidance

“Select all that apply” - clear indication

Daily dose of motivation - engage users

 

Building in Figma

 

1. Onboarding

 
  • Skippable Onboarding — provides users with the opportunity to “Learn More”

  • Graphics represent main features — Mood-tracking, Thought-journaling, and expressing Gratitude

  • Progress indicated — progress bar and pagination dots

  • Streamlined flow — mandatory path reduces from 8 frames to 4 frames

 

2. Journal Entry Creation

 
  • “+” button for all — Original “mood”, “thought”,” Gratitude” options combined into one to prevent user confusion

  • Option to click “Save” or “Continue” — solely track mood or continue with thought-journaling

  • Default help pop-up for first-journal entry creation — explains the significance and provides guidance

  • Progress bar — progress indicator, consistent with onboarding

 
 
 
2. entry creation.gif
 
 

Default help pop-up — explains significance behind identifying distortion

”Select all that apply” — clear direction

Scrolling indication — crop-off at bottom of screen to indicate scrolling

 

3. Post Journal Creation

 
  • Summary — provides an overview for users to gain insights

  • “Daily Reminder” — being shifted from onboarding to post-entry creation, boosting users intention to sign-up after learning benefits of journaling

  • Gamification pop-up — gaming system encourages user engagement

  • Discover pop-up — inspires users to explore other functions the app has to offer

 
4. post entry gif.gif
 

4. Home

 
  • Daily Dose of Motivation — increases motivation and builds positive associations with the app

  • Search bar — Facilitates users to find a specific journal entry


 
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Prototype

 
 

Design System

Continue to Refine the User Experience

By crafting clear yet effective user flow, enhancing feature design, and preventing cognitive load, our team expected this redesign would increase user adoption, user engagement and drive retention rate. Moving forward, we would like to delegate our focus on the accessibility of the app by utilizing web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) compliance to make the emotional support service more approachable to everyone.

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Reflection

 

Single Focus - If you tackle everything, you achieve nothing
Coming out of the initial stakeholder meeting, the team was left with a vast list of goals to tackle. To avoid scope creep, we decided to align design practice with the scope. We identified the priority of each task and built actional plans with a honed focus on meeting user and business goals. This constructive approach led to smooth collaboration with stakeholders, provoked agile thinking among the team, and resulted in rewarding outcomes.

 

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