Case Study 03
Designed the UI (0 → 1) for an AI-driven database that web-scrapes trusted mental health articles for children their and families, improving user accessibility and ease.
May 2025
UX Design, Research
Overview
Anna Freud is a world-leading mental health charity based in London. Emphasizing compassion, collaboration, and equity, Anna Freud aims to close the gap in well-being and mental health by advancing the best science and practice with everyone who impacts the lives of children and families.
For this project, Anna Freud aimed to test and develop the UI for an AI tool providing trusted mental health articles for parents and carers.
Example article
First, our team conducted competitor analysis and usability tests for parent/carer interactions with trusted healthcare resources like Anna Freud and the NHS. For the latter, we applied top-down and bottom-up research methodology, asking users to research topics given a mental health diagnosis vs. a set of symptoms.
Our goal was to understand how people utilise online resources and their trust in AI when researching mental health. Noticing many parents were reluctant to share their experiences with us, I chose to expand our research to teachers, counsellors, and nannies: other critical groups often responsible for supporting children's mental health care needs.
Next, our team conducted 30+ in-depth interviews to better understand the needs of parents and children firsthand. Synthesizing our findings revealed four key insights.
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Trust: a major barrier
Parents are skeptical of AI because of perceived lack of empathy and misinformation.
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Lack of navigable tools
Parents seek clear, intuitive sites that help them understand their and their children's health.
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Stigmatized mental health
Talking about mental health can be difficult, making it even harder to discuss with children.
From our analysis and ideation, we identified three key improvements to Notion’s notification system aligned with the themes we discovered. The final product was informed by group discussions that considered Notion’s existing features and competitor notification systems.
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Trust
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Navigability
Clear search function with AI-generated anchor links. Users can quickly jump from topic to topic, with sources listed at the bottom.
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Navigability
Search history allows users to revisit past queries, notifying them when an update has been made to the database.
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Security
Bookmarks & Collections helps reduce barriers by providing a private space to save and revisit resources.
These features relieve the mental strain for sorting through lists of resources, update users on new information, and let them store vital, trustworthy mental health resources.
Thank you to Mira, Landy, Hailie and Jolla for your effort on this project! I'm grateful to have learned how to approach sensitive topics and research with care, deepen my UX/design-thinking abilities, and contribute positively to children's healthcare.
Lila's sprint
Landy's sprint
Jolla's sprint
Hailies sprint