PHASE ONE
Topic for UX Research: Facilitation of Mental Health Dialogue within the Elderly Community.
I chose to focus on the topic of mental health dialogue within the elderly community because I think it’s a space where some significant barriers exist but often go unaddressed. Having grown up around my grandparents and great-grandparents, I’ve witnessed how generational beliefs can make opening up about mental health challenging, complicated by factors like hearing loss, memory issues, and limited familiarity with technology. This inspired me to explore the roots of these barriers and potential interventions to foster more natural and safe conversations for older adults.
Brainstorming: Initial Mess Map
To begin, I created a mess map to organize everything I knew about the topic. I broke it down into key areas, such as cultural stigma and accessibility issues, which served as a starting point for understanding the broader landscape. The process was eye-opening, as visually mapping everything revealed how interconnected these issues are and prompted me to ask some guiding questions.
Guiding Questions
As I was making the initial mess map, these were the questions that prompted my preliminary research:
1. What factors most influence seniors’ willingness to discuss mental health?
2. How can technology support mental health without increasing complexity?
3. Which existing local programs have proven successful, and why?
Research
As I researched, I kept updating the mess map to reflect new insights and challenges that arose. For example, one surprising thing I found was that in-person, community-based programs are often more effective than virtual solutions for this group. This shifted my thinking: while I assumed that technology could play a big role, I now realize that tech solutions may add to the barriers rather than reduce them. So, I revised the mess map to highlight this, and it makes me want to explore how to make technology more welcoming for this community.
Revised Mess Map
Overall, revisiting and revising the mess map after each new finding has helped me create a clearer picture of my project goals. Moving forward, I want to focus on interventions that rely on technology and build a relationship between innovation and the elderly community.