ROLE
Product Design
CLIENT/ORG
Felicity Care
TIMELINE
4 Weeks,
2023
TEAM
Vaibhav(Prod. Manager)
Shubham, Dipak, Pratik & Haris(Engineers)
SKILLS
Product Design
Research
Usability Testing
TOOLS
Figma
Context & Problem
Felicity’s platform offered therapy and self-help tools but lacked a key element—community support. Users often felt isolated between sessions, missing the opportunity to connect and share experiences with peers.
Community-driven spaces are essential in mental health, fostering emotional safety, shared understanding, and resilience.
Goals
Foster Safe Connections: offered therapy and self-help tools but lacked a key element—community support. Users often felt isolated between sessions, missing the opportunity to connect and share experiences with peers.
Empower Peer-Driven Support: are essential in mental health, fostering emotional safety, shared understanding, and resilience.
Boost Engagement: Increase user participation and retention, targeting a 30% reduction in app churn through meaningful community features.
Lets understand Community a bit
What it takes to build a Community
1 / Strong Foundational Intent
Define the purpose and value proposition for the community. It must clearly align with user needs and goals, making it an indispensable space for members.
2 / Fostering Early Engagement—(based on Online ones)
Users expressed hesitation in sharing personal details upfront, highlighting the need for gradual onboarding with privacy reassurances.
Tiered reward systems
Exclusive Content or features
Incentivize Participation
Early interaction in Q & A’s
Monthly/weekly spotlights
Focused Engagement
Voting system for topics
Themed challenges for contribution
User-Driven Topics
3 / Sustaining Engagement
Design for a self-sustaining community by ensuring a balance of content creation, moderation, and member interaction.
Competitive Analysis - What works & why?
Didn’t really have a decent mental health community space among any of the direct/indirect competitors, at that point of time.
So, instead focused on the existing social platforms like the below ones.
Got interesting insights from Reddit, Discord, Twitter & Facebook Groups. Collated everything below, precisely.
PROS
Anonymity: Users can share personal experiences without revealing their identities, fostering honest discussions.
Focused Topics: Subreddits allow for niche communities around specific mental health issues.
User-Driven Content: Content is generated by users, promoting community engagement and diverse perspectives.
CONS
Inconsistent Moderation: Moderation quality varies across subreddits, leading to uneven rule enforcement and potential exposure to harmful content.
Lack of Real-Time Interaction: Discussions are asynchronous, which may delay support for urgent issues.
PROS
Interactive Engagement: Voice, video, and text channels enable real-time communication and support.
Customizable Features: Server roles and permissions can be tailored to create a structured support environment.
Moderation Tools: Offers advanced moderation features(Granular Role Permissions, Audit Logs, Auto-Moderation Bots, Automated Escalation) helping to maintain a supportive and safe environment.
CONS
Complexity for Non-Tech Users: The platform's complexity can be intimidating for users unfamiliar with its interface.
Privacy Concerns: Potential privacy issues due to the platform's open nature and server management policies.
PROS
Real-Time Interaction: Immediate engagement through tweets and replies facilitates quick support and information sharing.
Crowdsourced Insights: Twitter's model of user-generated content encourages diverse perspectives, which can be invaluable for crowdsourcing advice and support in a mental health setting.
CONS
Privacy Issues: Public nature of tweets may deter users from sharing sensitive information.
Superficial Interactions: Limited character count can restrict meaningful conversations.
PROS
Customizable: Groups can be tailored to specific mental health topics with various privacy settings.
Event Creation: Easy to organize webinars, support sessions, and community events.
CONS
Privacy Issues: Users are hesitant to share personal information due to Facebook's data policies.
Potential for Off-Topic Discussions: Without strict moderation, discussions can easily deviate from mental health topics.
02
THINK
Personas and Participation Dynamics
Community personas are primarily defined and divided between Participants who engage & Non-Participants who just exist yet observe. There are further classified, into a custom personas for a mental health community.
1 / Participants
Active Contributors: Regularly engage and support others by sharing experiences.
Silent Observers: Consume content and benefit from the community without actively participating.
2 / Non-Participants
Peripheral (Lurker): Engages passively with no active contributions.
Inbound (Novice): Newcomers exploring the community, building towards active participation.
3 / Transitioning Roles
Community Advocates (Leader): Guide discussions and maintain community norms.
Legacy Members (Elder): Long-time members reducing participation due to changing circumstances.
*Backed by the research on Communities by Lave & Wenger.
Based on the type of community personas, I categorized different users in the specific persona brackets & cover a broad demographics for this project(*Legacy members were not included in the research, as this would be a new community).
How Might We?
After analyzing user concerns, persona insights, business expectations, best community standards and competitive benchmarks, I identified 5 core HMW questions to guide the development of a new Community feature.
HMW ensure a safe and supportive environment that encourages users to share their mental health experiences without fear of judgment?
HMW ensure the community content remains relevant and helpful to users, even as it grows and diversifies?
HMW build a structured support system that effectively integrates professional advice from therapists while fostering peer support?
HMW design a reward system that incentivizes early and sustained engagement within the community, fostering long-term loyalty?
HMW maintain high-quality moderation to ensure a consistent, safe, and focused discussion environment across all community interactions?
Let’s brainstorm..
After analyzing user concerns, persona insights, business expectations, best community standards and competitive benchmarks, I identified 5 core HMW questions to guide the development of a new Community feature.
1
HMW ensure a safe and supportive environment that encourages users to share their mental health experiences without fear of judgment?
Establish Clear Community Guidelines: Define Acceptable Behavior, Regular Updates.
Implement Strong Moderation Practices: Trained Moderators, Advanced Moderation Tools, Efficient Reporting Mechanisms.
Provide Safe Sharing Options: Anonymous Posting, Dedicated Support Channels.
Continuous Feedback and Improvement: Regular Surveys/polls, Adaptable Policies.
Foster Empathy and Support: Empathy Training resources, Peer Support Programs, Highlight Positive Interactions .
2
HMW ensure the community content remains relevant and helpful to users, even as it grows and diversifies?
Curated Content & Content Pillars: Define and highlight valuable content based on defined content pillars like educational resources, personal stories, and expert insights.
Personalized Feeds
Dynamic Topic Segmentation: Topic/category updation with time
Incorporate Expert-Led Content & Interactive Events: Roadmap for launching different activities, exercises based on engagement metrics.
Celebrate Achievements: Work on gamifying the experience
3
HMW build a structured support system that effectively integrates professional advice from therapists while fostering peer support?
Layered Support: Tiered system for general access, peer groups & then exclusive 1 on 1’s.
Collaborative Sessions: Joint sessions with Therapists & valuable influencers for professional/peer balance.
Dedicated Expert Channels
Therapist-Led Workshops and Q&As
Supervision and Support
4
HMW design a reward system that incentivizes early and sustained engagement within the community, fostering long-term loyalty?
Set Clear Goals: Reward key actions like posting, participating. Estabilish milestones.
Tiered Rewards: Early rewards(Points, badges for first posts, and onboarding).Milestone rewards(Recognition as engagement grows).
Exclusive Access: Early feature access and VIP groups for top contributors.
Recognition: Leaderboards, badges, and community spotlights
Loyalty Programs: Points for rewards and anniversary recognition.
Gamification: Challenges, competitions, and progress tracking.
Peer Recognition: Shout-outs and nomination systems.
Adaptation: Regularly gather feedback and adjust rewards.
5
HMW maintain high-quality moderation to ensure a consistent, safe, and focused discussion environment across all community interactions?
Moderator Recruitment: Hire diverse, trained moderators in mental health and conflict resolution.
Proactive Moderation: Use AI to flag inappropriate content and issue automated warnings. Provide easy reporting mechanisms for users.
Specialized Moderation: Assign experts to sensitive topics like trauma. Create protected discussion areas with additional moderation.
Positive Engagement: Highlight positive contributions and implement peer recognition.
03
CREATE
Information Architecture
Before coming up with the IA, I spent some time ideating/sketching & researching the mechanics of different social media platforms, as I did during the Competitve analysis, phase. This compelled me to pick the essentials, & discard the rest.
User Interfaces
Instead of creating designs, I quickly created Prototypes using the ideas & the existing design system. So, from sketch to Prototypes, skipping the wireframes as the stakeholders were on the same page with me & I had a decent design system to quickly iterate.
Here are the final versions, according to the user flows.
Let’s restart from the Homepage again, Now that the issues are covered.
Let’s move on to how a user can post or comment.
If some user wants to report or get a post or a comment moderated, which might have been missed by out dedicated moderators...
What, I have labelled as Feature are direct solutions around user concerns.
04
IMPACT
Impact-outcome of this project
Community feature release helped an enormous number of people to connect and heal,
driven by user feedback, therapist interactions, and iterative testing. This was an initial strong feature, in the series of upcoming features like Journal, Mindful Classes & Affirmations.
Community’s success wasn’t measured in revenue but in genuine connections and happier, supported users.
Impact isn’t always counted—it’s felt.