RECOVERY BUDDY
Helping people recovering from addiction remain sober
Project Overview
As a therapist I worked in a clinic that specialized in addiction treatment for two years delivering individual and group therapy. I’ve noticed the significant impact of addiction on people’s psychological and physical health. Colleagues and myself have noticed how challenging it is for people battling addiction to stay sober post intensive treatment, but also to identify what might have lead them to relapse.
A Mobile App that Helps Prevent Relapses
The Recovery Buddy app allows people recovering from addiction to gather data that generates insights on their triggers and supports them to stay sober in the long term.
The app also offers tools and gives users access to a supportive online community to connect with.
Responsibilities
- Initial Research/Competitive Analysis
- Ideation
- Qualitative/quantitative user research
- Building personas/journey mapping
- Visual Design (UI)
- User testing
- Building wireframes in Sketch/Figma
- Prototyping with Invision
Timeline
4 weeks.
My process
Discover & define
Key Learning from the Competitive Analysis
1. The colour profiles are unappealing
“The colours are very unsettling to the purpose. Considering the intent of the app it should be soft and calm colors!”
2. The religious / spiritual content is too prevalent
“A method of pushing ideologies onto those in need disguised as a mental health tool”
3. Visual progress is motivating
“I love seeing the visual progress and also that the app tells me how much money I’ve saved!”
4. Notifications/reminders are helpful
“Reminders keep me on track and motivated. Excellent experience”
Who Are We Designing For?
So, If an app could help you stay sober which functionalities should it have?
Relapse Analysis
Insights / Data about my relapses
A way to follow my progress
Information about addiction
Coping strategies
A way to share information with my therapist / stay in contact
Creation
A calm and uplifting vision of recovery
Potential users’ feedback was almost unanimous regarding the look of the app.
- Apps currently available feel “sad/depressing”
- The colour palette should inspire calm/hope/be uplifting
- Colours/content that are affiliated with religion/ideologies should be avoided.
Building a Helpful and Intuitive Flow
Early user testing with cards revealed crucial information about the user flow.
Onboarding:
- “It’d be helpful to be asked questions to build my profile the first time I login. I think otherwise I’ll just forget about it and end up not doing it.”
Slip Analysis:
- “Something to help me analyze the situation when I have a slip is helpful, but it’d be cool is this could lead to some form of help or strategies to cope”
- “I’d like to have a feature that would motivate me to stay sober and remind me why I’m doing this. I feel like it’s nice to keep track of my sober days and the money I’ve saved, but I also want to stay focused on why I chose to become sober.”
Onboarding Solution
Personalized Insights and a Guided Slip Analysis
Home/Profile
Users found that having a visual way to quantify their progress was helpful to keep them motivated. Most participants also thought that having a motivation board where they could upload pictures and quotes reminding them of why they want to become sober in the first place was uplifting.
Insights
Participants mentioned that the “insights generator” was the most helpful feature. They thought that keeping track of where, when and with whom they had relapses in addition to their thoughts and feelings could help them gain awareness of certain triggers to avoid or pay attention to. In terms of language, most participants preferred the word having a “slip” when they used rather than the word “relapse”.
Relapse Analysis
Potential users suggested that after the analysis it would be helpful if the app reminded them of their relapse prevention plan or potential coping strategies. They thought having prompts that they could scroll through and choose from (ex: emotions, triggers, etc) was helpful.
What's Next?
Notifications, Communicating Insights, Connecting to a Smartwatch
Final interviews with potential users led to interesting leads for future iterations of the Recovery Buddy Mobile App. Participants agreed that they could have a tendency to forget using the app after a few months of recovery. It’s been suggested that notifications alerting the user at moments/locations when they might be at risk of using may be helpful. Users also suggested that a functionality allowing them to share the use of the app with their therapist could be very helpful as a therapeutic tool.
Finally, future iterations of the Recovery Buddy could also include functionalities that would allow participants to connect the mobile app to their smart watch. The data collected through their smart watch could automatically generate new insights.