Steve Loh
Founder
,
MYLOH
According to the WHO, adolescents constitute an important social and demographic group in the South-East Asia Region, accounting for almost one fifth of the total population of the region. The failure to recognise and address mental health problems in children and adolescents is a serious public health problem in the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3.4 and 3.5).
Myloh, short for My Life of Hope, is a mobile application that combines the behavioural sciences of psychiatry and psychology with advanced Machine Learning technologies to create a mental health E-buddy that’s there 24/7.
We began with an audit of Myloh's existing screen flow to identify pain points, gain points, and opportunity areas. We also conducted a heuristic evaluation to examine the application's usability. A key consideration was maintaining a sense of continuity between the old and new apps. As such, the look and feel of the modular components had to be carried across subtly.
We sought insights into the existing ecosystem of mental health support for youths, capturing general perceptions and attitudes toward mental health, and personal experiences of struggling and coping with mental health issues. Combing through literature reviews of Singapore's mental health landscape and conducting interviews with secondary and tertiary students, teachers, and counsellors, Chemistry captured approximately 750 data points.
These rich qualitative data points were synthesised into themes of systems and processes within schools, motivations and pain points, mental health triggers, self-administered coping mechanisms, help-seeking methods, and general perceptions of Myloh. This allowed us to identify some key barriers preventing youths from seeking help and, thus, the key opportunity areas to ease students' access to the help they need.
The final app experience employs gamification principles to motivate and engage a younger audience. Users are able to track and progress their mental health journey at their own pace, according to their needs with an element of fun.
By unlocking goal islands, it encouraged consistency in up-keeping users' mental well-being. Users can also express themselves in a fun way through the personalisation of a custom designed Otter avatar, rewarding users with further customisability as they progress.
One of the key insights from the research was to offer UX paradigms that youths were already familiar with. For this we created a journaling feature inspired by Instagram stories.
Additionally, the app includes a chat function that doubles as a directory for users to find the appropriate features, resources, or help lines.
The app has been a runaway success, and is being adopted by a number of schools who are providing it across the board to all students in the recognition of the importance of building good mental wellbeing and resilience amongst the younger generation.
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