Designing a holistic approach to processing grief
Grief Wellness is a grief management platform that helps people process their grief through structured reflections, activities, and insights. This holistic approach unites a previously disjointed set of services that required a high level of effort and coordination to manage.
I was the founding product designer, where I led product discovery, ideation and design, and eventually managed the technical implementation of the MVP (see implementation project).
Paul Gehrig, Product & Design
Founder
Case Western Reserve University Students
Problem
Grief is a self-perpetuating cycle
The grief feedback loop
The cycle starts with a trigger and is fueled by unconstructive and negative self-talk, causing people to neglect their basic needs and isolate themselves, continuing the cycle.
Ideation
How might we prevent the grief feedback loop from gaining strength?
Metrics:
Outlook on the future
Frequency of triggers
Approach: Design Sprint
Define
What fundamental challenge are we trying to solve?
Sketch & Decide
Come up with ideas and pick the one that seems the most promising.
Design
Design experience with the new solution, choose the most important assumptions to test.
Test
Craft research plan, conduct tests, gather findings.
Collaborated with students at Case Western Reserve University’s entreprenuership institute
We recruited students from a variety of backgrounds to introduce fresh ideas and perspectives.
Sprint Guiding Principles
1. Getting started > being right
2. When in doubt, draw it out
3. Together, alone (working independently on the same task)
2. When in doubt, draw it out
3. Together, alone (working independently on the same task)
Insight from Experts
The founder and other experts in grief and therapy presented different facets of the problem to the sprint team to align on the basic mechanics.
Results
The team used insights and studies mentioned by experts to flesh out the idea of the "grief feedback loop".
Map out context
We created a high level map to generate a shared understanding of how people currently approach managing their grief.
Results
Most existing grief management tactics require significant effort and planning from the grieving person, making them even more difficult to commit to.
Look for inspiration
With this shared context, each participant went off on their own and compiled examples of how others have addressed similar problems and shared them with the team.
Results
Many participants drew inspiration from journaling and mood tracking products, their consistency and simplicity seemed approachable for someone experiencing the grief feedback loop.
Design and test
We designed a usability test to see how a simple grief-centric daily reflection would effect peoples’ perception and understanding of their emotions (compared to an ‘average day’).
Results
Grieving people want to be able to track their progress and have the option to reflect deeper if they feel like it. Having a next step or course of action after a reflection was percieved as very empowering.
Solution
A consistent, structured journal to understand triggers and constructively process grief.
3 simple steps
People can submit a reflection in just a few minutes, subtle prompts guide people ready for a deeper reflection.
Nudges to act
People are encouraged to engage with constructive activities and ideas based on the content of their reflections.
Track progress and notice trends
People can track changes in their mood over time and uncover associations to their triggers.
Results
Designed and developed a basic web-app
800+
reflections logged
58%
average daily usage
76%
noticed general improvement