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Case 06 · Mental health · Kazan Federal University · Russia

A platform for psychological self-regulation

A service for a center that helps people with anxiety disorders. A clinical method turned into training a person can follow, with a doctor watching.

Client
Kazan Federal University, founded in 1804
Geography
Russia
Role
UX/UI Designer
Domain
Mental health
Platform
Mobile app
Based on
A doctor’s own method
A night panorama of blue mountains: a phone showing the Regulation well-being screen on a round blue plinth

The screen of the day: a well-being check-in and the personal practice, seen from a bird’s height.

01

Goals and principles

Problem. Stress runs in the background of modern life. Bad moments and negative emotions at work, among people and at home build up psychological and emotional tension. That tension turns chronic, and chronic stress brings a long list of psychosomatic illnesses. The project set out to block the excessive emotional response and to damp down the physical symptoms that travel with it.

The author of the method. Valery Ivanovich Lykov is a psychotherapist, holds a Russian candidate of medical sciences degree, roughly a PhD, and is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and addiction medicine at a pediatric medical university. He studies the levers that act on stress: autogenic training, meditation, yoga, hypnosis, bioenergetics. On that base he built his own method for regulating the psyche in anxiety disorders.

Goal. Sharpen the ways a person can regulate their own psyche under particular conditions: during emotional stress, and in psychosomatic and borderline mental disorders. What the person works on is the bodily side of the stress response and the physical symptoms stress produces, from the simple ones through to the complex, shifting body sensations that have no clear physical cause.

Two Regulation phones: the Explore shelf with courses and a quick SOS section, and the “How are you feeling?” screen with a ring of six colored emotion faces

The Explore shelf and the ring of emotions. The platform opens with one question, “how are you feeling?”, and the form comes after that.

02

Process

The client’s first stage is profiling: how heavy the state is, what exactly is disturbed, which goals to set. The platform runs an interactive testing algorithm for that, and it picks the treatment plan the doctor has broken into weekly sprints.

How are you feeling?

Self-assessment, three steps to the first week

The Regulation self-assessment screen “How are you feeling?”: six emotion cards, from happiness to bodily discomfort
The question about well-being: six states, from joy through to bodily discomfort.
The Regulation goals screen “What are your main goals?” with a list: stress management, anxiety control, focus, sleep
Goals, from anxiety control through to sleep and focus. More than one can be picked.
The dark Regulation screen “Start your first week” with the first week plan and a yellow Lets go button
The first week: the training plan, and the terms of the trial period written plainly.
03

Interface up close

The platform is assembled from four parts of the method, and each part became a flow of its own in the app.

  1. Sprints under supervision

    After the testing, every sprint is reviewed by the doctor and adjusted when it needs adjusting.

  2. Practice and exercises

    The cyclical part: practical theory and exercises. The tracker shows how the person’s state changes at each stage of the work.

  3. Mood diaries

    The person logs their own state, through mood diaries and repeat tests.

  4. Consultations with a doctor

    Detailed private consultations with the psychotherapist, for the moments when they are needed.

The Online session screen: a list of personal Regulation specialists recommended for the profile
Online session: the platform suggests specialists that match the client’s profile.
A chat with a psychotherapist in Regulation: messages, a join call button and a course card
The conversation with the doctor: from the first message through to a call and a prescribed course.
The Regulation support chat: a live specialist answering a question about courses, with the queue visible
Support chat: live answers, and a queue the person can actually see.
A large tilted Regulation phone above a blue ocean: the “How do you feel now?” check-in and the feed of the personal daily practice

The daily practice: a state check-in and the exercises of the day. The sprint reads as a path, one step at a time.

04

Type and styles

Humanist Raleway, soft card radii and the emotion faces. Styles for a product people hand personal things to.

A specimen of the Raleway brand typeface: white Aa, Bb and Cc pairs on a bright blue background
  • A yellow smiling face, the state “happiness” Happiness
  • A surprised face with an open mouth, the state “interest” Interest
  • A pink face flinching, the state “bodily discomfort” Bodily discomfort
  • A purple crying face, the state “oppression” Oppression
  • A pink angry face, the state “irritation” Irritation
  • A blue circle with a question mark, the state “other” Other
The self-assessment scale: six faces in place of a clinical scale. An interface about anxiety cannot be an anxious interface.
Regulation chat components: message bubbles, a “Join the call” button and a lesson card, “An important skill”
The exchange with the doctor: the call, the recording of it and the assigned lesson, all inside the chat.
Regulation lesson cards: today’s session, a completed exercise and the lessons that come with a subscription
Lesson cards: the session of the day, the exercises already done and the lessons on subscription.
A Regulation news card, “On the development of intelligence”, with a date, a summary and the psychologist’s details
News and announcements of meetings with specialists.
The floating Regulation navigation pill with the five sections of the app
Navigation: five sections in a floating pill.
05

Outcome

A tool for helping people

What came out of the work is a platform built for the widest possible audience. That was the point: it had to work for a person with no medical training. At its core it is a set of plainly written methods and exercises done under a doctor’s eye: they help a person regulate their own body and mental state, and get “above the stress” and take it out of their life.

The case is published without metrics. In mental health the numbers belong to the doctors, and I am not the person to report them. I can go through the process in a call.

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Have a service where a person’s calm is the point? Tell me and we will turn a complicated method into steps people can follow.