Headspace

Mental health

Mental health is often a difficult subject to bring up, and can be even more difficult to talk to our children about. Headspace approached us with the hope that we would be able to help create an easily accessible online hub for family and friends looking to support others.

Q. How might we help potential carers of struggling young adults learn about the journey ahead so that they can help prevent crisis?

Challenges

The client is not able to provide us with research participants due to the potential to trigger underlying concerns

Participants needed to be potential carers for young adults between the ages of 12-25 who had no prior experience caring for anyone with mental health struggles

Ensuring high levels of empathy when interviewing in case anything did accidentally trigger a participant or one of us conducting the interview

Staying within the education space and avoiding solutions that near in on the treatment space

5 User interviews

39 Survey participants

Data analysis

The biggest barriers in reaching out for help and education were lack of mental health literacy and the worry that any help they do seek will be of substantial out of pocket cost.

"I wouldn’t know the difference between mental health struggles and just normal teenage behaviour"

The data in this spike highlights the assumptions from headspace that there is a need for more education around caring for others with mental health concerns.

Psychological services are often expensive and harder to seek funding for if it is needed.

Lack of knowledge

Cost

"I am unsure about the journey ahead...and what about the stigma that comes with it..."

"How do I know what signs to look out for? I want to build and sustain trust in our relationship"

"I don't even look after my own mental health, how am I supposed to support another?"

Information architecture

Working in such a difficult space meant that it was imperative we put ourselves in the carers shoes. To continue on with our design process, we found it useful to conduct a brainstorming exercise where we asked ourselves what our carers initial questions might be (as reflected in our research) and created this proposed site map.

Recap

This particular initiative was extremely research focused despite the barriers we faced around finding participants for user interviews. We got around this by utilising those in our smaller social circles as a proxy for the end carers.

We finished up with a proposed site-map and presented the finding of our work to the clients. They provided us with encouraging feedback and thanked us for handing over a body of work that they could use within the company to bid for higher levels of stakeholder support in and funding.

HEADSPACE

Mental health

Mental health is often a difficult subject to bring up, and can be even more difficult to talk to our children about. Headspace approached us with the hope that we would be able to help create an easily accessible online hub for family and friends looking to support others.

Q.

How might we help potential carers of struggling young adults learn about the journey ahead so that they can help prevent crisis?

Challenges

5

User interviews

39

Survey participants

Data analysis

The biggest barriers in reaching out for help and education were lack of mental health literacy and the worry that any help they do seek will be of substantial out of pocket cost.

"I wouldn’t know the difference between mental health struggles and just normal teenage behaviour"

The data in this spike highlights the assumptions from headspace that there is a need for more education around caring for others with mental health concerns.

Psychological services are often expensive and harder to seek funding for if it is needed.

Lack of knowledge

Cost

"I am unsure about the journey ahead...and what about the stigma that comes with it..."

"How do I know what signs to look out for? I want to build and sustain trust in our relationship"

"I don't even look after my own mental health, how am I supposed to support another?"

Information architecture

Recap

This particular initiative was extremely research focused despite the barriers we faced around finding participants for user interviews. We got around this by utilising those in our smaller social circles as a proxy for the end carers.

​

We finished up with a proposed site-map and presented the finding of our work to the clients. They provided us with encouraging feedback and thanked us for handing over a body of work that they could use within the company to bid for higher levels of stakeholder support in and funding.