In the wake of both the pandemic and racial violence, there’s the potential for an increase in the number of people impacted by mental health conditions.

• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among young people.
• LGBTQ youth are 4x more likely to consider suicide than straight peers.
• 46% of LGBTQ young people have reported engaging in self-harm in the past 12 months.
• 50%+ of transgender and non-binary young people seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months.

Design a mobile app that allows LGBTQ youth free access to mental health services during crises, peer-to-peer support, and empowering educational resources.

• Create at least 15+ unique connected screens.
• Use at least 3 Adobe Stock images.

1. Create an efficient and preventative onboarding process that leads people in crisis directly for help.

Direct connection to a counselor or other options when in crisis or having suicidal thoughts.

SafeMinds includes LGTBQ+ and common young adult issues to choose from to better connect youth to a suited counselor.

Reaching out for help is difficult — having options on who you ask for help can promote feelings of trust and comfort.

Get support from other young adults to build community and feel less alone. Choose among different group chats that encompass a variety of topics.

Youth who may not be ready to talk to someone may benefit from self-help guides and educational articles/resources.

To design Safeminds well, I needed to understand the problem and my target audience's pain points. Understanding their motivations and behaviors would guide Safeminds to help them better solve their problem.

• A lack of availability
• The belief that mental health treatment “doesn’t work”
• The high level of mental health stigma in minority populations
• A lack of adequate health insurance coverage (and even for people with insurance, high deductibles, and co-pays make it difficult to afford)
• A mental health system weighted heavily towards non-minority values and cultural norms
• Racism, bias, and discrimination in treatment settings

• Education - mental health is not a myth, and normalize mental health experiences of our target audience demographic.
• Create awareness - sharing stories of mental health, struggles, triumphs, causes, and symptoms.
• Action - volunteer, get help, educate others on what to do when in a crisis, or when someone you know is need of help.
• Facilitate access - making hotlines readily available, multi-language options, free chat/text.

After better understanding my target users and how we might solve their problems, I prioritized some features based on their pros and cons and researched the Trevor Project's existing services.

• Free access to a trained counselor both for in crises and general issues (combats financial inaccessibility and generalization of mental health struggles)
• Access on one's phone and caters to preference of counselor and identity (privacy and awareness of individual differences/cultures)
• Peer to Peer groups and Stories/Resources Section (Cultivates sharing and builds community while educating and de-stigmatizing mental health issues)

My teammate and I worked on the onboarding process first and created user flows/tasks that lead to building new screens. Designing the screens based on the main user tasks helped in keeping us efficient and focused. I drew out low-fi wireframes on Adobe XD.

It was difficult to get user testing done with only 2-3 days to complete SafeMinds. My teammate and I were able to ask two users to try our prototype.

Our time constraint of 3 days was pretty stressful, but it was also fun — I felt pushed to be more efficient.

Here is our final design of SafeMinds. Feel free to try out the prototype below. You can go through the onboarding process, choose a counselor, and check out both the group chats and resources tabs.