Problem

The difficulty of accessing and the cost of face-to-face therapy services has led many people to turn to mental health and meditation apps for coping with stressful situations, dealing with intense emotions, or relaxation.

Users need to find an option that fits their context quickly, in the most conversational and humane way possible.

Case setup

Users can come from a wide range of age groups (from infancy to elderly), the differential aspect being that they are familiar with voice assistants and need assistance due to anxiety, stress or other non-pathological emotional disturbances.

Target audience

Setting

In this case, the user has just returned home from work with a headache and feeling very stressed. She has only a few minutes to rest before picking up her children from school, so she cannot spend too much time looking for a meditation that suits her.

Placeona

The user is limited in her ability to interact because of her situation and not so much because of the space around her. She has a headache and needs to close her eyes to concentrate, so the only senses available to interact with the interface are hearing and speech.

My role

Content design, VUI’s personality definition and UX Writing of the script.

Goal

Zzlow offers virtual assistance with the purpose of:

• expand the access to mental health services to people of a wide range of age groups

• improve the state of mind of its users

• offer tailor-made recommendations based on the person's needs and their context

• adapting to the specific placeona

Izzy's personality

Izzy, the virtual assistant, has a reassuring, positive and friendly voice.

Voice

On this occasion, Izzy will use a friendly and professional tone. And, above all, they will make direct and respectful interaction, focused on conveying empathy.

Tone

What can Izzy offer?

The virtual assistant can offer:

• guided meditations

• daily emotion tracking (pattern recognition that is used to improve the recommendations)

• timer activation for unguided meditation

• general self-care tips

• meditation reminders

It is not able to diagnose pathologies and cannot adapt its responses automatically because it does not recognise the context.

What does Izzy need to know?

It is necessary for the user to provide the context, information about their emotional state and their preferences for settings ( session length, level of explanations, etc.).

Flowchart

The user flow focuses on the first interaction the user makes through the application. She has created an account before, but this is the first time she will interact with Izzy.

The first thing she hears when she calls the assistant is a welcome message to the app, which ends with a call to action asking her what emotion she wants to work on. The user responds stress.

The assistant then asks her what does she want to achieve: relax (sleep), clear her mind or reflect on the causes of stress. The client chooses to clear her mind.

She is then asked about the amount of explanations she wants to hear. The user chooses as many as possible, which will include a breathing and visualisation guide.

The last question is about the meditation length preferred by the user. Alex selects 10 minutes.

Izzy repeats the selected settings for the user to confirm. And when the user is ready, the meditation begins.

UX Writing

Throughout the conversation, Izzy talks in a positive, approachable, and reassuring way, prioritizing empathy toward the user.

In this case, they address the user in a familiar way (“tú”) because in Spain it is a sign of trust and closeness; this would need to be adapted if the product were to be used in other Spanish-speaking countries.

"Hi, Alex: I'm Izzy, your Zzlow virtual assistant. Welcome to your first meditation session. Sometimes life can be challenging, and emotions can be overwhelming. Don't worry."

"I am sorry you are feeling stressed. There are many things we can do to help you feel better. "

All of the assistant's messages end with a call to action after listing the options available:

"I'm here to help you find calm and let go of sadness, stress, or anger. Tell me, how are you feeling right now?"

"Tell me what you would like to achieve with this meditation session: falling asleep, clearing your mind, or reflecting on the causes of stress."

When the natural language understanding (NLU) fails and the assistant does not get the answer, they ask a question to confirm what they have understood:

"You mean you prefer a detailed explanation of breathing and visualization?"

Throughout, the coaching is done in a colloquial and very conversational language, as if you were with a supportive friend.

"Great, get comfortable, you are about to begin a 10-minute guided meditation to clear your mind of stress. Let me know when you are ready to begin."

Given the nature of the exercise I have only created one user flow, the happy path, in a professional environment and with the appropriate means, I would develop different utterances to provide the assistant with responses to different expressions, and alternative flows.

Script