Find a Therapist

There is a lot of talk these days about the emerging and growing demand for therapy services. Over 50 million Americans struggle with mental health issues, ranging from depression to anxiety to OCD to ADHD. Many reports are emerging that indicate a sharp increase in that number in the past 12 months, possibly due to social and political unrest.

As the demand increases, however, many are experiencing difficulty in finding the right practitioner, or even any practitioner, to walk them through how to heal and lead healthier lives.

I wanted to explore the problem. The issues people face, the obstacles they encounter, and the workarounds they use to find a therapist. I also wanted to find out what factors lead to people giving up and not getting the help they need. Ultimately, I hoped to solve some of these problems with technology.

Our User

First, I tried to figure out a typical user. In my anecdotal research (conversations with friends and family) I discovered that the person usually tasked with finding a therapist for themselves or their family were moms. While this is by no means always true, I did feel the “mom” demographic was a good place to begin.

I reached out and found several moms who

  1. Had kids old enough to have needed therapy

  2. Had looked for therapists for themselves or their families

User Interviews

I met with users who fit my persona and had organic conversations with them, getting really curious about the challenges they face.

It was interesting and kind of sad to hear how painful this process is today. Consider that this user is often in some mental distress. The idea of being vulnerable and open with a stranger is already daunting, but consider finding the right stranger while also already suffering from a baseline of mental illness. It reinforced my belief that the easier I can make the task, the better.

Some recurring problems/obstacles became apparent through these conversations. I compiled them into the top things important to people looking for a therapist.

  1. Price/Insurance Coverage

  2. Location (everyone I talked to did not prefer telehealth for therapy, so proximity was important.)

  3. The therapist’s “vibe,” is sort of an indefinable quality that just exists between two people. They all felt that there needed to be a good vibe or energy.

  4. Availability, and a waiting list if the therapist is not available immediately

  5. Specialty, but spoken in laymen’s terms. Not in alphabet soup by the practitioner's name or in words they don’t know the meaning of.

  6. Philosophical and/or religious beliefs

  7. References, but not star ratings or reviews. My user didn’t trust online reviews. They wanted to hear from someone they knew and loved.

  8. Gender was important in some cases.

  9. What the office looked like

Sketches

I started to sketch out how to bring these criteria into an app that allows people to easily search for and locate the right therapist. It seemed to me that making a really intuitive search with good filters and many good, relevant search results that are easy to read and full of the right information, was a good place to start.

I wanted to focus on the experience for the “patient” user, but I realized there’s probably another user, and that’s the therapist who wants to advertise or list this service. But, this user has a different set of problems, so I first attempted to solve the patient’s user’s problems.

First, the user lands on a list that’s filtered only by proximity. Obviously, there would be a step before this where the user approved location services on their device. If they disapprove, they would likely be forced to enter a zip code to get started. Showing all results from anywhere would be unwieldy, so an initial location filter brings the initial list down.

The user can open a list of filters and narrow down the search. Here is where good, wide-open, and simple UI really differentiates this app. There are already some apps that do some of this, but they are cluttered and difficult to use. Again, empathizing with the user, makes the process even harder and overwhelming.

Once the list is filtered, the user can click on any result and get more information on the therapist. Since this is a mobile app, the UI pattern I imagine using here would be an action sheet or bottom sheet. So the user doesn’t feel they’ve lost their place in the search. Browsing means quick glances and an ability to easily get back to the search if needed.

High Fidelity

Once I knew how I wanted to lay it all out, I set out on high fidelity designs. This was the result.

Final Thoughts.

This is where I am on this project today. I know there is a lot more to do with testing and validating my assumptions, but I have not done that yet. When I do, I plan to bring my original user subjects back and run them through the app and get overall feedback, eventually testing specific interactions through Maze. I can already see that there is more to do. Filters need more definition and introducing in-app messaging means we need a message/notification center. This isn’t very disruptive, either, as there are currently resources like this, although they don’t capture and display many of the important parameters we mentioned. Overall, though, I think this is a good start.