Athena Vimal
'Mental Health America' Redesign and
Research Project
Nation's leading non-profit dedicated to the promotion of mental health, wellbeing, and condition prevention.
background
context
Mental Health America’s mission is to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, with a focus on prevention, early intervention, and recovery. They provide education, advocacy, and free mental health screenings to empower individuals and communities. Through their nationwide network, MHA supports local programs that advance equity, reduce stigma, and improve access to care.
Our team recognizes the importance that platforms such as Mental Health America's have as support resources for users, so we wanted to identify pain points in attempting to navigate its website and help resources.
my role
UX Designer/Researcher
timeframe
Ongoing (started October 10th, 2025)
tools
Figma, FigJam
User Research and Findings
Goals
Understand how users navigate through the MHA website.
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Find the pain points of users who attempt to navigate the website to find help or support resources.
Determine primary user demographics/primary motivations or needs when seeking mental health tools
Online Research
Sources
Mental Health America National
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National Institute of Mental Health
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National Alliance on Mental Illness
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National Council for Mental Wellbeing
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Findings
40% of youth experience symptoms of poor mental health.
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Clear visuals and instructions are necessary when navigating health resources.
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Most sites only offer emergency or temporary service options, but no personalized and direct, long-term action plans.
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User Survey
Questions
Within an online mental health organization, what types of support are you looking for to support your mental health?
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​Do online mental health resources reflect your background, identity, or lived experience?
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What influences your trust in online mental health resources?
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Have you experienced any challenges when searching for mental health support online?
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How would you describe your experience with the layout and design of the MHA website?
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Which formats do you prefer when learning about mental health resources?
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Findings
Sent to target audience (students aged 16-23) through Google Forms (accessible platform).
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Site-Specific Findings:
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Difficultly knowing where/how to start navigating.
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Finding limitations within many sites and resources.
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Finding current layout to be disorganized and lacking interactivity.
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Students prefer videos and animations, interactive features, licensed professional services for help, and self-guided help tools.
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Mental-Health Resource Oriented Findings:
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Concerns about the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the sources.
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Resources aren't reflecting their specific identities very well.
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Desire for more language options and representations.
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User Personas
Using the findings from both our survey and online research on user struggles and wants within navigating mental health resources, my team and I put together user personas to characterize them. These personas helped us understand how the preferences and needs users of Mental Health America may look.
How Might We?
Due to the time constraints my team faced and the fast-paced timeframe given, we focused on narrowing down the most pressing and urgent points for redesign. These pain points shaped how we approached our "How Might We?" statements.
How might we enhance the readability, organization, and accessibility of MHA resources so users from diverse backgrounds can easily find and understand the help they need?
How might we design an engaging and supportive platform experience that encourages users to continue their mental health journey/sourcing?
Ideation
To simplify our ideation process, each member of our team created 8 sketches in 8 minutes. Compiling all of our ideas, we each then voted on our favorite 5 collective ones. Below are the redesign ideas for action our team finalized upon:
Sharing stories and experiences with others on the platform, anonymously.
Immediate and tailored guidance for users after screening tests.
Reorganizing homepage layout.
Increased language options.
Chatbot for quick and personalized support.
Adding an anonymous platform on the site for users to share their own stories, as well as viewing stories from other users whose specific experiences they relate to adds a sense of comfort and solidarity.
A standout finding from user research was the lack of personalized guidance for action after taking the site's screening test. By providing clear steps for action and regular follow up features, users can feel informed and empowered in navigating their mental health journeys.
We decided that based on user feedback, redesigning the layout of the site's homepage to increase ease of feature accessibility and navigability would be beneficial.
Many users expressed their desire to see increased language options such as Spanish and Chinese for the site, which would increase accessibility of the site to a wider range of audience.
The addition of a pop-up feature offers a quick and tailored support resources for users who may be seeking immediate or less informationally in-depth resources.
* In retrospect, our team realized that choosing 5 different points to focus on improving was not the best choice in our process considering the time constraints we had for the progression of this project.
Choosing the most pressing weak point or two at the time would have been the most logical and beneficial to go about tackling this initial redesign.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Chatbot Feature
Anonymous Discussion Forum
Homepage
Increased Language Options
Screening Results Page
Our team's lo-fi designs reflect our collective redesign choices that prioritize easier navigation and accessibility choices for users.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Before
After
----> Cleaned out navigation bar and enlarged search bar on homepage to reduce cognitive load during initial site navigation.
Before
After
----> Redesigned stacked information cards feature on homepage into a clickable carousel for enhanced readability and navigability.
These three wireframes reflect updated features of the MHA site, demonstrating improvements in inclusive wording choices and direct guidance for user action.
Final Prototype
Our prototype demonstrates a scroll through an easier-to-digest homepage, as well as the added discussion forum, included language options, and ChatBot.
User Testing
We tested three users within the targeted audience for MHA, here's what they said:
ChatBot
Straightforward and intuitive usage, but question the usefulness of the current automated suggestions.
Language
Good for multiple audiences, however locating the feature itself is a bit difficult.
Discussion
Easy to navigate through, and feels it provides a sense of community and support.
Overall, users recognized the more immediate feedback from resources and steps for action our redesign provided over the original site. However, there are definitely further tweaks to be made within the implementation of these new features.
Reflection
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