Background

Personal Experience

In March 2020 I lost my dad completely unexpectedly. Left trying to figure out what to do next, I was exposed first hand to the large gap in digital resources and conversation around grief.

Opportunity

As COVID-19 continues, grief of all types - loss of family, jobs, houses - are at an all time high. Social isolation measures will continue to reduce people's ability to obtain necessary resources, human connection, and support they need.

UX Lens

By better understanding grievers and their needs, there is large opportunity to find a more innovative and efficient solution to provide people with the support they need.

Design Process

My Role: Product Designer Timeline: 4 Months

Empathize

User Interviews

7 face-to-face user interviews were conducted via Zoom.

Findings are based on a sample of 7 interviews:

  • All participants have experienced grief personally, relating to an immediate family member

  • All participants were female

  • 4 of the 7 participants interviewed were considered experts in the space

  • Age range was between 18 - 35


Key Findings:

  • 7 out of 7 participants mentioned they find the most help in talking to someone who has gone through similar experiences

    • Helpful factors included: similar grief type, similar age, being able to resonate with someone

  • 6 out of 7 participants mentioned they have trouble or avoid talking about their grief with other family members

  • Participants that experienced grief at a young age (<20) reported more feelings of guilt with how they handled the situation at the time - with common behavior such as acting out, focusing on social life, and ignoring their grief

  • 4 out of 7 participants described their grieving process as “delayed” - mentioning they didn't begin dealing with it until 3+ years later

  • 2 participants mentioned conditions of Covid19 have brought back more feelings/emotions relating to grief

  • Main pain points with grief resources included: limited relevant resources, couldn't relate to resource, hard to find

  • Most helpful grief resources included: sharing/communicating with grief community, getting involved/giving back, and creative outlets

 

Thematic Analysis

View File Here

Remaining Research Questions:

  1. Does gender have an impact on dealing with grief?

  2. Does religion, ethnicity, cultural differences have an impact on how someone wants to grieve?

  3. What is the preferred TYPE of support: Practical, peer, informational, services

  4. HOW do people want to communicate? Via text, voice, video, in-personWho do they want to talk to - other members of the community, professionals, etc

  5. Do people want to follow people? Have leaders?

  6. More data on resource type and preference: books, podcast, meet-ups, creative outlets, journalingIs there interest in community involvement/charities?

  7. Qualitative data on needs: List of resources, educational information for grievers, people to talk to

  8. Is “young adults”the right target focus? Has COVID19 impacted other grievers?

    1. Do people coping with loved one’s terminal illness consider themselves grievers - what resources do they need?

  9. Privacy settings, anonymity, amount people want to share

Additional User Research

User Surveys

Geisen (2020) explains self-administered methods such as web or mail surveys often lead to more accurate answers for sensitive topics when compared to those of phone or in-person interviews

Shared via Social Media on personal design account

  • Also asked experts and members of the grief community to share

  • Survey was divided into 5 sections

    • 1. Intro Section (Screening question)

    • 2. Talking About Your Grief

    • 3. Personal Experience

    • 4. Grief Resource Preferences

    • 5. Additional Thoughts

  • Sections 2 and 3 used a 7pt likert scale (Finstad, 2010).

Results:

291 Responses

Age range: 18 - 40+

20 Countries:

  • USA

  • Mexico

  • UK

  • Ireland

  • Scotland

  • Spain

  • Canada

  • France

  • Malaysia

  • Australia

  • India

  • Singapore

  • Norway

  • Germany

  • Denmark

  • Finland

  • Wales

  • South Africa

  • Austria

  • Netherlands

 

Analysis

Users were asked to rate how much they agree with statements about helpfulness and/or interest when talking to someone about grief on a likert scale of 1 to 7. Important result callouts below:

 

Talking About Grief

Top 3 Results:

  • Personal experience with grief - 6.52

  • Similar grief type - 6.27

  • Another griever you know personally - 6.08

Note-able Callouts:

  • Patterns by gender: None

  • Patterns by age: Therapy

  • Patters by grief length: Lowest scores by the 7-10 years ago age range

  • Another griever who I don't know personally

Preferred Communication Method:

  • Face to Face (In Person) - 85.5%

  • Text - 51.3%

  • Phone (Audio) - 42.5%

  • Video - 22.5%

  • Social Media - 2.9%

 
 
 

Grief Resource Preferences

Top 5 Results:

  • Resources for my specific type of grief (divorce, cancer, loss of dad, etc)

  • Connect with people of similar experiences

  • Therapy

  • Listening or reading about other's experiences, without having to personally share

  • Online tips from professionals

Device method preferences:

  • Mobile - 69.5%

  • Desktop - 24.7%

  • Tablet - 2.5%

Noteable Callouts:

  • Patterns by gender: None

  • Patterns by age: Therapy

  • Patters by grief length: Lowest scores by the 7-10 years ago age range

  • Biggest variation of responses:

    • Attending support groups

    • Educational resources supporting my grief type (learn about an illness or cause of death, etc)

    • Resources I can send to friends to educate them on better supporting me

    • Practical support about things like finances, funeral planning, etc

 
 

Conclusion: Grief is not universal.

But all grievers want to feel heard, understood, and less alone.

Define

Personas

 
 

UX Drawing

Goal: Visualize and reflect on key learnings from user interviews, surveys, and literature review.

Key Criteria:

  • High level of personalization

    • Grief type

    • Age

    • Grieving length

  • Empower user to be in control of what they want to do, when they want to do it

  • Mobile first

  • Focus on "community" and connecting

  • Allow option to share story or just view/read others

Ideate

Competitor Analysis

  • Things around mental health (Headspace, Calm, etc) or Therapy but not a lot specific to bereavement and grieving resources

  • None offer the ability to connect with other grievers (lots of opportunity there)

  • Some focus on young people, but oldest target is 25

Brainstorm and Ideation

  • Worst idea possible

  • Crazy 8s

  • “What would __ do?”

Prototype & Testing

 

Lo-Fi Designs

Goals and Takeaways:

  • Flush out initial user flow and concepts

  • Understand what research questions lo-fi user testing needs to answer

  • In order to successfully achieve the level of personalization users voiced wanting in user research - a lot of information needs to be provided during the sign up flow

Low-Fi Testing:

Validate initial user flow and asses user understanding and comfortability with the experience. Answer below research questions:

  • Do users feel the sign up flow is an invasion of privacy?

  • Are they hesitant to provide specific information?

  • Do they understand how to remove tags recommended to them/ what these tags mean?

  • From the Logged In Home Page, is it clear what each page would include?

  • Does the Connect page match expectations of how the user would want to search for connections?

 
 

User Testing & Iterations

 

2 user interviews were conducted via GoogleHangouts.

  • Participants both fit the "super user" demographic and were therefore assumed an accurate user group for the testing needs; female, grieving loss of immediate family member, age 25-30

  • Participants were given the clickable prototype via an Invision link and were asked to share their screen and use talk aloud method as they clicked through

Key Findings:

  • Users did not have any privacy concern with the sign up information needed

  • Both participants mentioned that they liked the journaling capability and would expect to be able to reference back to old posts

  • Connect page: participants wanted to search by key word or phrase rather than user name and wanted ways to differentiate grievers from professionals at the thumbnail level

 

Hi-Fi Designs & Branding

 

Goal: Provide users with a personal, safe, and inclusive space for them to connect with others of similar experiences..

Areas of focus for final prototype:

  • Sign Up Flow

  • Home Feed

  • Connect

  • Journal

 

Next Steps

Limitations

  • Inability to have in-person interviews and user tests due to implications of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Pandemic

  • Biases due to relevancy of personal experience

Learnings

  • Interviewing for sensitive topics

  • Personal grief growth and understanding of online community

  • Power of social media in user outreach

Potential Future Work

  • User test high-fidelity prototype

  • Spend additional energy and research around pages less prioritized in this project

  • Get a team and build this platform for the people that need it!

Additional Links