Tuning In

Using the power of music to create a sense of community and encourage conversation around mental health for 2nd generation immigrants.

Team

Sarah Young
Liam Alexander
Minyeong Lim
Jiyoon Seok

Role

UX/UI Design
Market Research
Pitch Deck Design
‍

Created For

Collaborative Workshop Project with Klick Health

Created In

3 months

The Ask

How might we create a disruptive, innovative strategy that utilizes our client’s platform to facilitate conversations around health inequities?
Klick Health approached our design team with this interesting ask. I worked with a team of other designers and researchers at Sheridan College to determine how we could address this challenge for their R&B musician client. Taking the singer’s audience, background, and values into account we leaned into formulating a strategy that would bring light to issues surrounding health inequity.

Problem

Mental Health Inequity 💭

Mental health can be a difficult subject to talk about, and it becomes even more challenging in cultures where there is negative stigma surrounding the subject. In Vietnamese, for example, there is no word for mental illness. The only word they have is “bệnh tâm thần,” which roughly translates to madness. This demonstrates the significant shame and negative associations with mental health disorders in such cultures.

Due to this negative stigma, many 2nd generation immigrants feel disconnected from their families and struggle to find support for their mental health challenges. Our findings showed that one of the main barriers to getting support for many was struggling to start conversations. To combat this, we designed a marketing strategy for the artist to encourage conversations about mental health and change the narrative around mental health challenges.

Our Strategy

Combining the artists passion for health inequity and music, we created a strategy for a playlist sharing challenge which utilizes AI and other emerging technologies to generate interest and promote discussion around mental health issues for 2nd generation immigrants. We found that music can have a strong power to connect individuals, bring them together, and encourage conversation. By sharing music, they are one step closer to bridging the gap and finding a community of others who relate to their struggles.

Design Process

Research

Discovering the Opportunity Space

As a team we began the project by researching the artist’s audience to discover potential opportunity spaces within that age demographic. We came across the story of Sahaj Kohli and her difficulties with mental health as a 2nd generation immigrant, an experience shared with many other 2nd generation immigrants. When she reached out to her immigrant parents for support, they weren’t as understanding as she had hoped.

There was a lot of cultural and generational differences between the ways that we thought about mental health, the way we thought about how we take care of ourselves, and the way we thought about just kind of powering through when we’re struggling.

Kohli, Good Morning America

Another study that we looked at, which was conducted at Simon Fraser University on the mental health struggles of 2nd generation immigrants, found that 100% of interviewees said that to avoid creating more stressors for their families, they would avoid conversations about their mental health. Additionally, 86% of interviewees said their parents would never understand their mental health struggles.

Focusing on Mental Health

After our research, it became evident that a major space for opportunity for this demographic was addressing the need for 2nd generation immigrants to have better access to mental health support. Our findings showed that one of the main barriers to getting support for many individuals was struggling to start conversations. Because of this, we decided to focus on promoting conversations around mental health.

What’s Out There?

We examined the existing solutions to understand the gaps that we could target with our solution. Our team compared successful mental health support solutions in the market such as Bell Let’s Talk, CBC’s What Music Moves Your Mood?, and Brown Girl Therapy.

Helps encourage conversations around mental health and provides access to support.
Lack of specific support for marginalized groups

Uses music as a way to overcome anxiety and stress and promote conversations around mental health
However, the initiative is only targeted towards teachers and their classes

An online community for 2nd generation immigrants who are struggling with mental health
Provides a place for them to relate to others and gain access to support
Demonstrates a need for more proactive and innovative solutions

Defining Our Users

The team consolidated our research findings to determine our target users (who), their specific needs and frustrations (what), and how we can distinguish ourselves from other solutions in the market (wow). This allowed us to have a better understanding of our user group and the challenges they face to better define their needs and identify the value proposition we want to offer to our users. From this process we were able to accumulate the keywords below to define our users.

Finding the Gap

Creating personas for our users allowed us to further determine their pain points and frustrations. These include dealing with cultural stigma, having a difficult relationship with their parents, and not knowing where to find help. Understanding these frustrations led us to develop the following needs statement:

Needs Statement ✏️

2nd generation immigrants need a way to communicate about their mental health in a safe space so that they can feel understood by others and find a sense of belonging.

These individuals need not only better access to resources but also reassurance that, “Prioritizing their mental health does not mean they are rejecting their parents, culture, or community.” (Kohli). Our approach is to create a safe space for 2nd generation immigrants to talk about their struggles and provide community building experiences. This led us to create the following how might we statement:

How Might We? 💡

How might we create a safe space for 2nd generation immigrants to feel comfortable having conversations about their mental health?

Designing the Solution

The Musical Connection

Our goal was to use music as a catalyst to spark these difficult conversations. We discovered that music has immense power to connect individuals who have shared experiences, reduce stress, boost your mood, validate emotions, and encourage meaningful conversation. We saw potential to use the artist’s passion for music as a way of overcoming the cultural stigma and language barriers that many 2nd generation immigrants experience.

We decided to promote a playlist sharing challenge to encourage others, particularly of different cultures, to create personal playlists with songs that are emotionally meaningful to them. In this approach, music will be a medium for emotional expression as well as a catalyst for in-depth conversations around mental health and cultural stigma.

Creating a Shared Vision

As we started to create an implementation plan for our idea, our team struggled to come up with a cohesive vision of our solution. With the many different specifications and components from the employer and client, our team struggled to simplify our solution into a unified concept.

To overcome this, we went back to the requirements and each created storyboards of what we envisioned. This enabled us to understand each team member's vision, identify the strongest elements from each, and integrate them into a unified and shared vision for our solution. This activity also instigated defining the key concepts of our solution and led to the initial versions of the user journey.

Developing an Implementation Plan

To develop our marketing strategy we identified the key components of the solution that would contribute to its implementation and promotion. We brainstormed some other forms of medium to support our main idea and determined that the playlist challenge would be promoted and extended through social and print media, an application, emails, and a pop up event.

Visualizing the Solution

Further on I created some initial mockups and prototypes of the solution to visualize the solution and to aid in presenting to the stakeholders of the project. This included some prototypes of the initial screens of the application as well as a more refined storyboard of the event.

The Solution

Tuning In

Our solution uses the power of music to connect 2nd generation immigrants and others who struggle with mental health challenges. It encourages users to share their experiences and find a sense of community with others they relate to. This strategy aligns with the artist’s values and allows him to advocate for this prevalent issue in a way that utilizes his passion for music, creating a personal connection for the artist to the campaign.

With the popularity of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, creating curated playlists have become an extension of oneself and a mode of expression, making this a promising opportunity to drive engagement and positive change.

Promoting Conversation

Opening up the conversation for 2nd generation immigrants to better understand their mental health challenges and find community.

Musical Connection

Forming connections based on shared music tastes and experiences.

Finding Support

Helping those experiencing mental health challenges get the support that they need.