INTRODUCTION

NEC is a multinational Japanese information technologies organization focusing on various emerging and cutting-edge technology such as cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), etc. This 14-week project highlights how we as a multidisciplinary team leverage the power of AI to improve the user experience in healthcare in collaboration with NEC.

MY ROLE

UX Research, UX Design, Service Design, Prototyping

MY ROLE

Miro, Figma, G-Suites, Slack, Zoom

THE TEAM

1 Designer, 1 Engineer

TIMELINE

JANUARY - MAY 2022

THE PROBLEM

Mental health as a problem

Nearly 1 in 5 adults are experiencing a mental illness. Equivalent to nearly 50 million Americans.

Physical health only is not enough

Our mental state is overlooked. Currently, there is a lack of attention and services on taking care of mental health, especially in daily self-care.

THE SOLUTION

Understanding the problem

USER INTERVIEWS

Potential Users

5

Biomedical and Psychology Graduate Students

Clinical Therapist

1

LITERATURE REVIEWS

DIARY STUDIES

2

Nutrition Experts

1

Observations on eating behaviors

We observed how people eat by measuring:

Time and Duration
Type, Food source, Food choice
Context, People, Objects, Tools, Environment
User action: before, during, after
User feeling: before, during, after

Nutritional psychiatry

Use food as alternative treatment for mental health disorders.

Nutritions reduce the risk of depression.

Synthesizing what we learned

INSIGHT #1

The food we eat strongly influences how we feel

"I know I am in bad condition because I'm not being active or going outside enough or not eating healthy food."

"I don't really have the mood to cook and I was ordering a lot of takeouts and, uh, I gained some weight."

INSIGHT #2

"The change of my weight. Even minor changes make me feel happy. makes me know that it's working, I am on the right track."

“When you're depressed, when you're sad, when you're just tired, when you're anxious, you want something easy. “

The food choice we made affect our mood

INSIGHT #3

Changes in eating behavior reveals our mental status

Notify people of problems before they realize

“My diet varies heavily depending on what's going on in how I'm feeling.”

INSIGHT #4

People often tend to trap in the negative feedback loop

"I am feeling shitty about the food choices I make. And the shitty feelings makes me want to eat something to feel good."

Data about eating reveals our lifestyle

“We love to take the food on the table and put it on the plate of our loved one’s. ”

“I am lactose and nuts intolerant.”

“I like eating lunch by myself.”

“Eating with families and friends is a habit. I just think eating is a social activity.”

Defining the solution

Brainstorming Frameworks and Methods

Each of the stickies illustrate detailed hand sketches of how the ideas will look like and how each idea will work in order to achieve the goal.

Decision Matrix (left): Design Principles (Y-axis) x How does the sensor-embedded object work? (X-axis)

2 x 2 (right): Good vs Bad Ideas x New vs Already Existed Ideas

Service Blueprint

Mapping out the service blueprint has been very helpful for us to visualize how the systems that we created would fit into three different scenarios: before, during, and after eating. It also helps us to understand how the solution will run at the customer-facing level vs at the back-end.

HOW MIGHT WE