Hollo is a digital therapeutics platform focusing on the mental health market. Hollo utilizes research-backed Behavioral Health AI to personalize data-driven Digital Therapeutics for every patient. There are two main types of users, patients and practitioners. Patients would be using a mobile app for behavioral tracking and assessment, while a CRM in web app format is designed for practitioners. We are invited to work on the CRM on the practitioner’s end, and take a holistic review on how the CRM could set in the business ecosystem.

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First we listed out interesting data points by interviewees. Then we started grouping similar feedback into categories. Lastly, we further converge the groups into 3 main groups, process, preference, and therapeutic relationship.

In the “process” data group, we know that most of these practitioners rely on referrals as the main lead generation source. Setting expectations is one of the most important steps at the early stage of therapy. Surprisingly, they seldom prep prior to each session, as they believe their professional training already is more than sufficient for their practice.

In terms of the “preference” data group, they all prefer taking notes with pen and paper during therapy, and they do not use templates even for their notes. Also, face-to-face sessions are always better than online sessions, as they can pick up more non-verbal language in person.

In terms of “therapeutic relationship,” confidentiality is the foundation to building trust with patients. In addition, showing improvements with the help of monthly or bi-monthly assessments motivates patients to continue working on their issues. Hence, believing the therapy is beneficial for themselves, therefore pay more effort into therapies, and more confidence in their therapists.

Out of our expectation, the difference between counsellors, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists is not significant in terms of their processes and operations. The differences are slightly more significant during the usability test.

Persona

With the findings in the affinity map, we are able to come up with one significant persona, the “One man band” called Simon Chan.

Simon is a counsellor with a decade of experience in a clinical setting. Recently he decided to go solo, and start his own business. Unlike corporates he used to work for where the clinic had invested in the patient management system, he now has to manage all the administrations beside the therapy sessions.

Journey map

We’ve divided the journey map into 7 stages: lead generation, screening, onboarding, first session, post session, follow up session, and closing case file. The 4 key pain points fall into the screening & onboarding stage, and post session stage.

1. Paperwork @ Screening & onboarding

At the early stage of therapy, there is a lot of paperwork, including intake forms, contract, NDA, scheduling, and payment. Administrative work like sending appointment reminders before each session takes up too much time and effort at the current state.

2. Setting realistic expectation @ onboarding

It has always been a challenge to help patients set realistic expectations. Stigmatization of mental illnesses hinders the public understanding of mental health and wellbeing. The general public is not educated on the matter, and there is limited psychoeducation material available in the market either. It resulted in misunderstanding and unrealistic expectations, like instant recovery right after the first few sessions, or taking pills is the only cure for mental illnesses. 

However, having a reasonable expectation sets a solid foundation for the therapy, as patients are more open to interventions and understand that they are on their way at their own pace to recovery. The effectiveness of therapy relies on a reasonable expectation from the beginning. Yet it is a challenge at the moment.

3. Note Taking @ post session

The therapists prefer jotting notes by hand during the therapy because it helps patients feel less distanced from the therapist. Also therapists find typing directly into a digital system distracting for both parties, which is unhealthy for therapeutic relationships. So handwritten notes are always preferred during sessions.

When each session ends, therapists have to add any instant thoughts they came up with because these instant ideas change over time, so it is best to record every detail when the thoughts are fresh. Also, they need to transfer their handwritten notes into the digital system immediately which is quite time-consuming.

4. After hours @ post session

The practitioners avoid getting in touch with patients outside of therapy. Even though they would reply to urgent enquiries and emergent cases, spending free time after hours sacrifices their personal well-being. A clear boundary between work and personal life is crucial for their own mental wellbeing in order to help more patients in the long run.

User story

Under each touchpoint with significant insight from the journey map, insight cards are created to synthesize actionable pain points. To identify problem statements as below:

To resolve the users’ pain points from the problem statements, we started with a service blueprint with a holistic point of view to reimagine how the whole ecosystem might improve customers’ experience, especially “Education” from the first problem statement could not be solved within the practitioner’s dashboard.

Then, focusing on the requested main deliverable, the dashboard, we began with sketched wireframes, then with the help of a low fidelity prototype, we eventually achieved a high fidelity interactive prototype, where a design system is built. Last but not least, we tested out our prototype throughout the entire prototyping process.

Service blueprint

Problem Statement #1: Education

→ Leads generation

Tackling the first problem statement regarding how misconception roots from the lack of psychoeducation, it begins from the starting point where leads are generated. A psychoeducational forum and information platform can be integrated into the early stage of the ecosystem. The platform collects questions and confusion to be clarified from patients. Then therapists could start publishing content based on those topics to build their online presence, and correct misunderstanding at the same time.

As a starting point, we can scrape data online to generate hot topic suggestions for the therapists. Gradually, we would be able to source the data internally from Hollo’s own platforms, as the user base grows. The contents help with SEO as well.

Problem Statement #2: Notes & Paperwork

→ Documentation

To smoothen the note taking and paperwork process, there are two approaches. One is allowing therapists to write directly on a tablet, which is similar to the experience of writing with pen and paper. The written notes would be synced automatically to the cloud directly, and remain visible on the platform.

The second approach is to integrate the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system within the platform. After each session with handwritten notes on paper, therapists could take a photo of their notes, and upload them to our system. Then the notes would be converted into text.

Both approaches save the time and effort dealing with paperwork, without sacrificing the experience during therapy.

Problem Statement #3: After hours

→ Chatbot

In order to preserve after hours for their personal well being, an option for chatbot is handy when it comes to basic logistics enquiries. We understand urgent cases under certain scenarios (like tendency to self-harm or harming others), they have to get back to their patients. Therefore, therapists should have the choice to enable or disable the chatbot case by case, and be able to decide how the chatbot should respond to certain enquiries. Such chatbot lifts part of the burden off from therapists having to reply to patients during their off hours.

Information Architecture

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Based on the service blueprint, we drafted the above information architecture to illustrate what data are needed, and how they are intercorrelated between the therapist web app, the patient app, and the educational platform.

Wireframing & prototyping

We sketched out wireframes to gain a preliminary layout of how buttons should be placed. The later prototypes are built based on these sketches.

Low-fidelity Prototype

We started with a low fidelity prototype, combining the provided wireframes from Hollo, and integrated the insights we’ve discovered into the prototype. Then, the prototype was shown to users for feedback. The key takeaways are listed below:

• The calendar and schedule section on the home page should be placed at the middle, as they are the first info therapists look for.
• Shows schedule for that day with option for remarks, so they could have a better idea of what the day looks like for themselves.
• Reconsider the filters in the patient database page. Risk is particularly interesting yet confusing. They would like to know how the risk is calculated, which determines what they could do with the data. Otherwise, the risk data is useless for their practice.
• As for individual patient profiles, notes should be organised by session, and can be reviewed by session at ease.
• In addition, the “Visibility”, “Start”, and “Plan” buttons are confusing. For example, they thought “Start” means playing a video clip, rather than starting a new session.

High-fidelity Prototype

With the previous prototype, we iterated based on users feedback. We pushed fidelity, and started collating the design system. The following are key point from this round of usability test:

• In the patient database page, we replaced risk with diagnosis. However, the therapists worry that it might create bias. Labelling patients with such tags is unnecessary. Lastest interventions or latest homework might be alternatives.
• Closed cases are not important in the database page. Allowing it to shrink into an expandable tab makes it less prominent, and would not take up so much space for the ongoing cases.
• In terms of the individual cards in the patient profile:

• At the “Shared document” section, one-off documents like the consent form and in-take form should be separated from homeworks. The one-off documents could be shown in the form of a checklist instead.
• A new card could be added showing trends and track records from homework. As the user base grows with more data available, showing suggested interventions and therapeutic activities might be an attractive feature to include.
• Consider implementing presets by profession, as they have slightly different requirements. For example, psychiatrists need a section for prescription. It would be very handy if we can include a psychiatrist mode, psychologist mode, and counsellor mode.

Design system

The design system is designed on top of the “Tailwind” CSS library, as Hollo has been utilising this library throughout their interfaces. Additional icons are created when the existing icon in the library could be improved.

A 12-column grid is used in the design. Most cards are created with either a 3-column or 7-column grid. Tints of green that match Hollo’s branding are integrated. We went for a very clean layout, which gives a peaceful and medical vibe.

Usability test

As the final round of the usability test, minor tweaks are adjusted for better user experience. Below are the key tweaks:

• In the database, instead of showing diagnosis, showing contacts like phone number and email address would do the job, as the major function in this page is to search for particular patients. They search either with patients’ names, or with their contacts copied from their previous records.
• In-take forms are available for manual edit, as there might be cases where patients do not come through with Hollo’s patient app. When patients do come through from Hollo’s patient app, therapists could easily accept new appointments with new patients here.
• Added presets by profession. More options are available in the session card pop-up, like dosage, frequency, and option to save for later, and button to end the session.

Final Prototype