Diving deep

After our initial stakeholder meeting we conducted secondary research to learn more about the opportunity space. We dove deep into the space via identifying possible comparators, researching the legal changes that have led Northstar to hire a UX team, and did contextual research into the experience care seekers have when interacting with touchpoints similar to what Northstar wants us to develop. 

Creating a constellation of care

For this project I took on the role of creating a high level concept for the entire touch point strategy. Due to the name of the organization and the idea that they want to be a guiding light in the community (looking to expand on a national scale), I took inspiration from the Polaris constellation, where the Northstar resides. The entire project is based on this metaphor where the organization acts as the guiding light and all the different touchpoints we will develop and participants expand the constellation. 

This idea of zooming in and out of micro interactions within digital touchpoints, everyday interactions between care seekers, and intra personal interactions within the care seekers themselves, became an integral part of our work. Recovery is an everlasting journey and in order to build community support we wanted to focus on creating strategies that encouraged a constant influx of care within MCGT’s system. 

Here is our touchpoint map:

Rapid prototyping

One of the major touchpoints we recommended Northstar is a mobile application that allows care seekers to access a community of people who are at different points in their recovery journey. This will serve as a self care app dedicated to recovery that is always encouraging care seekers to flow into getting an assessment and entering the Northstar care ecosystem. My role here was developing features for the application that are driven by empathy for care seekers, guiding the overall look and feel, and prototyping key screen flows of application features. 

This is a daily check in feature that prompts individuals to check in with their own emotional state. In our research we discovered that self evaluation is a very important tool in the recovery journey so I wanted to include it in the application. This serves as the application’s intra personal feature, which then also encourages individuals to either perform a gratitude exercise (if the check in is positive), a grounding exercise (if it’s negative), and most importantly to get an assessment if they feel like they need it. Thus continuously influxing individuals into the constellation of care.

The real thing

I wanted to come up with a calming, soothing, environment that felt graphic and naturalistic. To me clear skies by the Minnesota lakes are the best way to observe the Northstar so I wanted individuals to get that look and feel. Here are the annotated wireframes I designed:

Client Presentation

Here is the video of our remote presentation. It’s a great representation of the overall concept and how it affects the entire touchpoint strategy we developed.