Willo: UCSD’s Go-To For Self-Care & Health Care App
Product Design/ UX Qualitative & Quantitative Research
MY ROLE
Product Designer
6 Months
2 UX Researchers
Figma, Airtable, Django, Microsoft Excel
5 Product Designers
2 Machine Learning Engineers
1 Project Manager
UX Researcher
April 2024-September 2024
DURATION
TEAM
TOOLS
OVERVIEW
Conducting Student Research
Design Implementation
Conclusion & Handoff
Although the topic of mental health has been more and more ominpresent in the world, UCSD students are still facing many difficulties for students navigating through the health systems and getting the resources they need in the huge school.
Statistics have shown that UCSD students have been using the emergency services more than ever for incidents ranging from __ to __ . UCSD Health has realized the severity of the issue and has tasked its subsidiary health innovation center, Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (JCHI), to design and launch UCSD’s inaugural mental health and wellbeing app for UCSD students.
^ JCHI official website
Introduction
UCSD Students Have a Mental Health Issue
At Willo, we believe that an individual’s mental health and wellbeing is not a simple thing to be “addressed”. It is not a one-solution-for-all subject matter; it requires a ground-sweeping, top-to-bottom revolution that reshape how a school treats the wellbeing of students.
With Willo, we aim to revolutionize how UCSD students engage with mental health and wellness.
Goal of Willo
Goal of Willo: The Willow Tree Revolution
Embodying the shape of a willow tree, the Willo app serves to embody a person’s mental health and wellbeing through taking care of the 7 areas of wellness (physical, social, spiritual, vocational, emotional & environmental).
Through the app, we promote student wellness by catering existing on-campus resources to students in a more personalized and mindful attitude.
“With Willo, we aim to revolutionize how UCSD students engage with mental health and wellness.”
-JCHI Team
The Willo app is designed by and for UC San Diego students. Structured around the students, we prioritize keeping the functionalities, purpose and goals relevant to students. Discovering student talent and passion in school to join our team, we are fueled by the heart to make our community a better place. To scale the production of app functionalities and raise funds, we partnered up with sponsors including but not limited to Traina, HHF, Brick Simple and more.
Empowering Wellness Through Community Collaboration
Student Driven, Community Supported
The Jacobs Center for Health Innovation team, comprised of faculty and UC San Diego students, partnered with talented agencies and institutions to develop a mental health and well-being app by students, for students.
KEY PARTNERS
OF WILLO
Results of Willo
Willo’s Performance & the “Featured” section
Willo achieved over 3000 student downloads in just 3 months after its release to the students. On the app store, it also has a stellar 4.3/ 5 star ratings.
The impact of Willo cannot be measured only through the total download amounts.
It serves to change the way mental health and wellbeing is perceived on the UCSD campus. That is why the Willo team strives to continue working with students in the future to ensure the app stays relevant and helpful to students.
©
2024
My Role
Leading the Research on the Featured Section
As the lead researcher responsible for developing the Featured section at Willo, I focused on understanding students’ habits and routines on campus. By analyzing raw data, I transformed these insights into the resource recommendation framework now available to users on the app.
Receive Personalized Recommendations
Purpose
Push recommended resources and events based on time of the school year and student archetype preferences.
Research Methods
Editorial Calendar
Student Activity Tracklist
Student Archetypes
->Journey Mapping
Student Qualitative Interviews
Co-Design Workshops
Student
Qualitative
Interviews
Student
Archetypes
Journey
Mapping
Student
Activity
Tracklist
Co-Design
Workshops
Editorial
Calendar
Featured
Section
Relationship
Student Perspectives: Conducted research with the student body to understand their views on the current mental health and well-being infrastructure at UCSD.
SME Insights: Interviewed subject matter experts to identify how Willo can effectively complement and enhance the existing mental healthcare framework on campus.
Q: What did we understood from the interviews and how does that carry over to what I was I was in charge of?
We understood the importance of utilizing existing mental health and other well-being infrastructures in UCSD to better cater them to students in a more mindful way
How Might We: Rough Draft
Efficiently utilize existing mental health and wellbeing infrastructure to allocate accurately to students to increase engagement and student-resource fluidity in terms of accessing new resources and making trying new things less intimidating, lowering the cost of trying new things, lowering the chance of trying something new but in result different from what I want. Want an app that give you things based on your activities and preference.
My Role: I am in charge of taking these insights and go above and figure out a way to create a framework to address this problem
How Might We...
leverage existing UCSD mental health & wellbeing resources to allow students easier explore and engage with new options, tailored to their preferences?
Gathering Ground-Truth Student Data
Interviews: Student & Subject Matter Experts
Students Insights:
What Students Care + Want.
SME Insights:
How Willo Plays a Role in Mental Health.
Getting raw & ambiguous information straight from our target users--UCSD Students
Understanding Willo’s role in UCSD’s current Mental Health & Wellbeing structure.
Feedback
🌟 Impact of Editorial Calendar
Key Impacts of the Editorial Calendar
The editorial calendar has been instrumental in helping the team anticipate general student sentiment and intent without requiring detailed knowledge of individual users.
It serves as a framework for aligning resource recommendations with seasonal changes in campus atmosphere and resolving ties in rankings based on timeliness. This temporal dimension enhances the overall app's adaptability and relevance.
Currently, the team uses the calendar for manual content curation, providing a structure to better understand and predict user needs. While automation isn't implemented yet, the interaction data gathered from this manual process will be invaluable for training future machine learning algorithms.
Next Steps:
Continue refining the manual curation process and gathering interaction data.
Use collected data to train machine learning models in the future.
Plan for a transition to a more automated system that integrates editorial calendar insights with AI-driven personalization to enhance responsiveness and user experience.
This foundation sets the stage for combining editorial insights with machine learning for a highly tailored and dynamic system in the future.
Feedbacks from AI/ML Engineers:
Implementing the Design
User-Facing Result of the Editorial Calendar:
The Featured Section
On the users end, the recommendation engine, Editorial Calendar, is carried out through the “Featured” section on the home page. On this front, the design team implemented the feedback collection loop, “Interested” & “Not Interested”, to collect insights on the accuracy of each recommended resource.
Offered by Service Name
O
Details
RISE Workshops include innovative and experiential programming aimed at promoting students' emotional, physical and social wellbeing. Workshops do not require appointments unless pre-registration is required.
Free to attend
Zoom
www.zoomlink.com
Tuesday, February 13
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Physical Health
Online Exercise
・
Event Title
Are you interested in seeing more events like this?
Not Interested
Interested
Sign Up
Offered by Service Name
O
Details
RISE Workshops include innovative and experiential programming aimed at promoting students' emotional, physical and social wellbeing. Workshops do not require appointments unless pre-registration is required.
Free to attend
Zoom
www.zoomlink.com
Tuesday, February 13
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Physical Health
Online Exercise
・
Event Title
Got it! We’ll show you more events like this one in the future.
Undo
Got it! We’ll show you fewer events like this one in the future.
Undo
Sign Up
Happening This Week
Category Title
See all
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Category Title
See all
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Event title
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Event title
Date
・
Location
Home
Appointments
Search
Profile
Get Help Now
If the user clicks “Interested” on a feedback card, there is no change to the featured content in the homepage.
If the user clicks “Not Interested” on a feedback card, the event/resource card will be removed from the homepage carousel and replaced with a new event/resource at the next content refresh.
Are you interested in seeing more events like this?
Not Interested
Interested
Got it! We’ll show you more events like this one in the future.
Undo
Got it! We’ll show you fewer events like this one in the future.
Undo
Events
Are you interested in seeing more resources like this?
Not Interested
Interested
Got it! We’ll show you more resources like this one in the future.
Undo
Got it! We’ll show you fewer resources like this one in the future.
Undo
Resources & Services
Design Iterations
Distinguishing “Featured” From Rest of Homepage
On the homepage, all sections except "Featured" are curated based on the onboarding process (displayed on the right).
The "Featured" section is the only component driven by AI recommendations and predictions informed by the Editorial Calendar.
However, for new users, distinguishing between different sections of the page can be challenging when presented simultaneously. For instance, a user might struggle to differentiate between "Suggested For You" and "Featured."
The iteration process laid out below aimed to address this issue pointed out in the design workshops we hosted.
Onboarding Process
Iterations
Category Title
See all
Service Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Mindfulness Studio
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Fitness & Yoga
Feb 13 ・Re
Featured
Suggested for You
See all
UCSD Grocery Shu...
Jul 13
Center Room A
・
UCSD Grocery Shu...
Jul 13
Center Room A
・
Home
Appointments
Search
Profile
Crisis Resources
Suggested for You
Category Title
See all
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Category Title
See all
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Event title
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Event title
Date
・
Location
Mindfulness Studio
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Fitness & Yoga
Feb 13 ・Re
Featured
Home
Appointments
Search
Profile
Get Help Now
Suggested for You
Event title
Date
Location
Event title
Date
Location
Featured
Mindfulness Studio
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Fitness & Yoga
Feb 13
・
RIMAC Room 1
Event title
Feb 13
・
Rec Centre
Category Title
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Category Title
Resource Name
Tags
Service Name
Tags
Resource With No Tags
Resource With No Tags
Home
Appointments
Search
Profile
Crisis Resources
Featured
Added different background style to distinguish the section apart from the rest of the page.
Shrink the size of “Featured” resources/ activities, allowing more to be viewed at one time.
Tidying up the page by consulting Spotify’s tile home page, cleaning up unnecessary white space and allowing different resources to stand out.
A Sustainable and Adaptive Feedback System to Enhance Willo’s Resource Recommendation Precision
The feedback system operates as an interconnected loop of four core components, each contributing insights and iterative suggestions to the others.
Example Flow:
Student Activity Tracklist: Insights from the tracklist suggest that CalFresh should be promoted during the first week of the Winter quarter.
Editorial Calendar: This recommendation is forwarded to the editorial calendar for review.
Approval and Implementation: After approval by the JCHID team, the suggestion is input into Django for execution.
In-App Feedback: Users interact with the resource, and feedback is collected. For example, if a significant number of users indicate "Not Interested," this data is used to revise the student activity tracklist.
The person managing the system then selects the next prioritized resource from the tracklist, starting another iteration of the process. This continuous feedback loop ensures that recommendations remain dynamic, responsive, and increasingly aligned with user preferences.
Student Activity Tracklist
Editorial Calendar
Django
In-App Feedback System
The Feedback Loop, Explained
Creating a User Manual For The Recommendation System
Thank you, JCHI
Designing for a Cause!!
Join The Bud Now!
Handing off editorial calendar
Preview of the slidedeck
©
2024
2
The Editorial Calendar reflects insights gathered from student interviews, student activity track list and journey mapping. It aims to cater specific resources to the users at carefully timed moments throughout the academic school year.
This repository contains all the UCSD resources collected for the Willo app. These entries are stored in Django, making them accessible within the app.
This interface allows us to input resources into the Willo app. In this tutorial, we will cover the required formatting for migrating information from the main resource list into Django.
After locating the specific resource you want to feature, head over to the Main Resource to prepare data entry on Django!
Let’s share these awesome resources to Willo users through Django!
1
2
3
©
2024
3
Editorial Calendar
Each of the colored rows signifies a specific resource category.
The specific number of resources needed to be selected from this category in each bundle of weeks is shown through: __ Items.
Be aware that the allocated item amount is different for every cycle.
The following resources in this section are provided in this quarter.
The featured section is only able to contain 6 items (resources) in each cycle (each bundle of weeks).
Therefore, please be sure to select exactly six items for every cycle.
View how to find these resources on the Main Resource List on the next page, let’s go!
©
2024
4
Locating Editorial Calendar Resource on Main Resource List
Locate the resource using its name on the D column
To ensure the system’s sustainability and accessibility for future usage, I created this slide deck to specifically delineate the necessary course of actions needed to take insights from editorial calendar to data implementation on Django:
During my time at Jacobs Center for Health and Innovation design team, I really enjoyed working under the PM along with outstanding student researcher and designers. I also want to thank HHF for its unconditional support. This experience taught me how important it is to have a supportive, transparent and collaborative work environment.
I wish everyone on the JCHID team the best!!
Designing for a cause is such a rewarding thing to do. It always reminds me of why I started to do UX design.
As a team, we often are reminded of how incredible it is to be designing the first ever mental health app for UCSD. It is not about making money or gaining publicity. Willo is truly at the heart of human-centered design. We want students to enjoy and leverage this app to create a better student life in school
©
2024
Mental Health
Arts & Culture
Academic
Career
Basic Needs
Academic
Get Started with Willo
Create an account to explore well-being resources and events for you
UCSD SSO Sign In
Troubleshoot your UCSD SSO
Mental Health
Mental Health
Gathering Ground-Truth Student Data
Student Activity Tracklist: Student’s Day-To-Day
From the conversation with the project manager, I understood the importance of first synthesizing data on the overall student body and UCSD resources offered to students. Taking into account preexisting research endeavors on both categories of data, I formulated a platform that aims to collect the following:
Total of ~1200 datapoints collected among 16 students’ data entry.
Data Synthesis:
Tri-Weekly Emotion Average: Reveals students’ general mental state in every point throughout the quarter.
Popular Activities Ranking: Highlights the most popular activity type.
Student Archetype Activity Summary: Gives the rest of the team a glimpse on how and what each student types are doing.
Framework Breakdown: Student Activity Tracklist
👀 Research Result: Student Activity Tracklist
👩🏼💼: Willo’s Project Manager
👨🏻💻: Me
👩🏼💼: Hey Thomas! We need to understand the students, especially relating to their daily activities, mood shifts...etc
👨🏻💻: Sounds fun and useful! May I ask what the purpose behind this is? It would help me understand the context a bit more.
👩🏼💼: Of course! Collecting more context-informed and raw/ true-to-ground data helps us contextualize and add onto insights collected from user interviews and many other previous knowledge on the student body!
👨🏻💻: Awesome, I have some thoughts on how the data collection platform would look like now. Thank you!
Student Archetypes:
Categorizing student archetypes and measuring each archetype’s activities and patterns helped align the data framework with existing research. This approach allows for a more personalized experience through the app, as it collects information specific to different users.
For example, an international student archetype benefits from tracking activities unique to their profile, which further enhances the app’s recommendation capabilities.
Student Activities:
The activity types are derived from various UCSD resources and the most popular activities reported by students through previous research, including surveys and interviews.
Emotional State Scale (Mood Check-In):
Through iteration and feedback from the JCHID team, I realized the importance of understanding the emotional correlation between student activities and their feelings.
This feature provides significant insights and patterns previously overlooked in research.
Prepping For Data Entry
Editorial Calendar: Springboard to Data Entry in Django
Utilizing the student activity tracklist, I finalized my research results with Editorial Calendar. The platform serves a single purpose: listing out the recommended resources for the whole year. The platform is designed to map the layout of Django.
Editorial Calendar
Django
