Background

Myloh, short for My Life of Hope, is a mobile application that combines the behavioural sciences of psychiatry and psychology with advanced AI and Machine Learning technologies to create an AI mental health E-buddy. 

Chemistry was engaged as a consultant to work with Myloh on reviewing and improving their UI/UX with additional features and tools alongside a brand new design to build user engagement.

The Challenge

"How might we improve the overall user experience of Myloh to make it more engaging and enticing for end users in order for them to manage and maintain healthy overall mental well-being?"

What We Did

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 Result

The insights gathered laid the foundation for the UX/UI work, and we began with improving on and adding to Myloh's existing features.

This included a chat function that doubles as a directory for users to find the appropriate features, resources, or help lines.

Myloh offers a range of resources and programmes to build youths' self-awareness of their mental health, and explore practices to safeguard their mental resilience.

Integrating well-known features into the app's design creates a sense of familiarity for users. The journaling feature in Myloh was inspired by Instagram Stories.

First Aid features were integrated to make help-seeking accessible for serious cases.

The entire 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. This also encouraged consistency in up-keeping users' mental well-being.

Personalisation allows users to express themselves in a fun way, rewarding users with further customisability as they progress.

Recognition

This project was supported by Singapore's Institute of Mental Health, National Youth Council, Infocomm Media Development Authority, and Enterprise Singapore.

In September 2022, Myloh and Chemistry were featured as an Honourable Mention in Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards for their work on the Myloh app.

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