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. ”
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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. Home
Daily Dose of Motivation — increases motivation and builds positive associations with the app
Search bar — Facilitates users to find a specific journal entry
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.
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.