Anxiety Capstone

My Role: UX Researcher Project Duration: 6+ months

The Problem

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States, yet the amount of people receiving treatment for it is under 44%

When it comes to anxiety, there aren’t a lot of tools that are effective at helping people calm down in the moment of their attack.

Research Process

I started off my project by doing some desk research. I wanted to know what was out there and what was or wasn’t working for people. What I found is that there are quite a few different apps that are geared towards people that experience anxiety or panic attacks. One thing all of these apps had in common is that they are centered around the idea of meditation, breathing exercises and self reflection. I ended up reviewing and scoring 5 different mobile apps and analyzing their reviews. Most apps scored great on their ease of use, but almost all of them had poor reviews on effectiveness, personalization and interactive feedback.

To continue my research, I sent out a survey and got over 100 responses. Some of the questions I asked on the survey included,

When you feel anxious, what do you do to comfort yourself?

Do you enjoy talking to someone in the moment?

Where in your body do you feel your anxiety?

How do you know you are starting to feel anxious?

Analysis

Research Insights

Some really important insights that I got from this survey is that not only do people do a huge variety of different activities when they feel anxious, but people do a combination of different kinds of activities.

The most popular activities include listening to music and going on their phone to distract themselves.

The mobile solution to this problem should include personalization options and different activities or games for people to complete.