Limited access to mental health therapy services in Indonesia, especially for individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural areas, is also another reason why so many people with mental health issues remain untreated. Qalboo, as a mental health platform for muslims, is trying to resolve this issue by developing in-app counseling feature, an online counseling therapy with muslim psychologists and counselors. Our therapist will give advices based on Islamic psychology to our muslim users who are more comfortable in seeking help and support from experts who understand Islamic values.

Qalboo aims to help muslim to heal and maintain their mental health by providing features such as Qur'an journaling, online counseling, wellbeing programs, and forum. Qalboo is backed by Antler and Iterative for its pre-seed funding stage.

As an agile company we were prioritizing speedy delivery so we decided to move forward with the resources we had at that time without conducting any additional formal research with users. As a designer who was also associate product manager, the methods I used for empathize stage was holding meetings with stakeholders and conducting some competitive analysis with similar platforms. Designing a feature with relatively complicated flow and requirement means I had to go back and forth between Ideate, Prototype and Test phase. For usability testing, since the company had no plans to conduct formal testing, I decided to do casual testing with friends, colleagues and family.

I conducted benchmarking on Riliv and Bicarakan.id, two leading similar mental health platforms from Indonesia. Both apps are providing online counseling service as well, with in-app appointment feature and with third party video call platform for the counseling session itself.

Making an appointment online can be agitating, so as a designer I have to dig deeper on how to provide a smooth, intuitive journey for users who is seeking help and hope. The idea of attending therapy session and talking about traumatic experience itself is frightening, that's why it is important to give a relatively painless experience in navigating this feature from the start to finish.

Task: Make a counseling appointment with an expert.

For designing relatively complex feature, wireframing had been a helpful method in figuring out the best flow and interactions for providing easy user experience. I'd done some iterations in wireframe and lo-fi prototype and use it to test with internal stakeholders. Since placing an appointment requires a lot of steps, I was having difficulties in deciding which step comes first. Analyzing user's pain points and discussing with stakeholders was very helpful for me in making more robust decisions.

Qalboo has two main colors, green and blue, that represents the merge of Islamic values the company is based on and psychology science. For this feature I chose to go with blue for the dominant color, because it's associated with calm and trust, and a touch of soft green here and there.

The requirement was complex and we're dealing with users who's experiencing pain. I hope this feature can provide help and support for individuals facing mental health struggle, especially for users who live in an area with no easy access to reach professional help. Feature was under development but due to financing issue we halt the release of the final product.