Hearest App
Overview
Hearest is a gamified therapeutic application designed to alleviate modern mental distress and social isolation. It utilizes a system of low-pressure, high-reward interactions to create a safe, supportive digital space where individuals experiencing emotional distress and their caregivers can connect and grow together.
Timeline
2022 Q1 - 2022 Q3
My Role
UIUX Designer
Responsible for
UX Research
UI & Visual Design
Prototyping & User Testing
Platform
App & Website
The Need for Sanctuary: Why Traditional Support Fails
According to a survey on depression and help-seeking behaviors in Taiwan, up to 44% of the population exhibits symptoms of depression, equating to over 10.1 million individuals currently struggling with emotional distress.
Crucially, only 12% of these individuals actively seek help or confide in people around them to mitigate their emotional state.
We observed that both individuals experiencing emotional distress and their caregivers face enormous pressure and mutual misunderstanding. This led us to hypothesize a critical gap:
A vast chasm exists between "those in distress" and "those offering support," often defined by social pressure, family estrangement, and financial barriers. This chasm represents a significant market opportunity for intervention.
In this side project team, my role extended beyond leading the 0-to-1 product experience design; I also had to overcome the following two distinct challenges:
1
The High Bar of Gamified Design
Following our initial user research, we strategically committed to gamification as the product’s core mechanism. This necessitated meeting a much higher standard than typical utility apps, particularly in terms of visual fidelity, micro-interactions, and motion design.
2
Sustaining Momentum in a Side Project Team
As the team members contributed their time based purely on passion, outside of their full-time jobs, maintaining continuous product momentum without formal KPIs or hard deadlines was a significant challenge. Our initial lack of effective collaboration mechanisms often led to dispersed discussions, unclear progress, inconsistent member participation, and multiple project stalls.
The Research Funnel
[Quantitative] 278 Surveys: Conducted to validate the common pain points experienced by individuals in distress and their caregivers.
[Qualitative] 20 In-depth Interviews: Selected qualified respondents to deeply uncover the underlying motivations behind their pain points.
[Process] Utilized Affinity Mapping to systematically analyze and synthesize the interview data.
Three Core Personas
Individuals who are ill-equipped to handle depressive emotions but feel obligated to care for someone close to them. They are easily overwhelmed by the distressed person's mood.
“My partner has depression, and when they are feeling down, I become their emotional trash can. I don’t know how to respond to sudden lows and often say the wrong thing, which makes them feel worse.”
Individuals who actively seek to care for the distressed person and strive to improve their caregiving skills. They are mission-driven supporters.
“I always enjoy the process of accompanying them. By listening to their worries, I understand them better and can give appropriate responses, making them feel truly understood.”
Those experiencing emotional suffering that falls between general population feelings and a DSM-5 diagnosis.
“When I enter a depressive period, I just wish someone could understand me, listen to me, and offer some help, so I don’t feel like I’m going through it alone.”
What is Holding Them Back?
Core Insight 1: The High-Social-Risk Stalemate
Our research reveals that all three parties deeply desire a closer connection, yet are simultaneously paralyzed by their own unique fears.
The Passive Caregiver: Feels obligated to care for a distressed person but is afraid of being emotionally consumed, leading to avoidance of active engagement.
The Proactive Caregiver: Desires to provide high-quality care but is anxious about saying or doing the wrong thing, leading to hesitation.
The Individual in Distress: Craves understanding but is afraid of becoming a burden, leading to avoidance of initiating contact.
These three compounding fears create a stalemate in the support relationship. Everyone wants to move forward, yet everyone is afraid of taking the wrong first step. Any direct, synchronous communication is viewed as high-risk.
Core Insight 2: High-Action-Threshold Self-Paralysis
We observed that individuals in distress are not unwilling to seek help, but are inhibited by the high threshold of professional assistance (cost, time, emotional effort, and social stigma).
They are commonly trapped in the gap between "knowing they need change" and "not knowing where to start." This contradiction—a desire for order against a deep sense of powerlessness—induces a state of paralyzing inaction.
Defining the Core Problems
Based on the profound insights above, we defined two core problems that our design solution must address:
Core Insight
The Strategic Problem
The High-Social-Risk Stalemate
How Might We Invent a Zero-Risk Communication Channel?
Since immediate, direct communication is the source of the emotional stalemate, our design must simultaneously satisfy the needs of all three roles by providing a low-pressure, high-safety mode of interaction.
The High-Action-Threshold Self-Paralysis
How Might We Transform High-Threshold Healing into a Low-Threshold Daily Routine?
Our design must dismantle the overwhelming task of self-healing, breaking it down into a series of effortless, positive-feedback micro-actions that provide users with enough sustained motivation for continuous improvement.
Derived Product Goals:
HMW Workshops: Bridging Problem to Solution
To address and resolve the two core strategic problems, my team and I held ideation workshops. We utilized a matrix mapping Key User Flows against Core Needs to generate concepts, refining the most viable solutions through a Gamification Strategy.
The Strategic Necessity: Why Gamification?
Based on our previous insights and competitive analysis, we realized:
Traditional Diary Apps Fail: They struggle to sustain user motivation for logging, potentially driving the individual in distress into a cycle of self-loathing and paralysis.
Traditional Chat Apps Fail: They carry emotional and social risks that could potentially trigger the companionship stalemate for all parties involved.
The Hypothesis: We therefore proposed that a gamified design could transform therapeutic and support interactions into simple, guided feedback loops. Unlike conventional functional applications, the gamified solution offered the best opportunity to create a zero-resistance and low-risk environment.
The Core Metaphor: The Birth of a Forest
We conceived of the 'Forest' as the central metaphor. The Forest represents a private, safe, and living space where worries are not "deleted" but "transformed" into trees that grow with friends' care (watering).
Solution 1: The Animal Messenger
Designing Safe Interactions for High-Risk Companionship
Core Mechanic 1: Ritualizing Care
Users select a unique animal (each representing a different personality) to commission and deliver a letter to a friend.
The recipient finds the commissioned animal wandering in their virtual Forest; they receive the letter only upon clicking it. This elevates a simple message into a warm surprise.
Core Mechanic 2: Mitigating Social Anxiety
Our interviews revealed that individuals in distress crave care but are extremely sensitive and fear social pressure (e.g., the need for an immediate reply).
Therefore, we designed the Animal Messenger to deliver letters with a deliberate 1-to-3 hour delay. This intentional delay creates a vital psychological buffer for both parties.
Solution 2: Heartseed
Disrupting Paralysis and Restoring the Emotional Flow
Core Mechanic 1: Motivating Emotional Expression
Core Mechanic 2: Friendly and Safe Support Feedback
Friends can choose to "water" the plant or leave an "Ema" (worry plaque) comment. This positive, low-friction feedback helps the tree grow, offering a strong sense of support to the caregiver.
The tree's growth provides the individual in distress with visual evidence of being cared for, while simultaneously giving the caregiver the rewarding feedback of seeing their efforts "recognized" and having an impact.
Validation: Proving Design Feasibility
After developing the initial design prototype, we utilized various resources and networks to validate our product hypotheses, including:
Design Iteration
1) Addressing the Cold-Start Problem for Social Apps
Recognizing the difficulty for new users to engage with Hearest when they have no existing connections, we introduced the "Magic Traveler" mechanism. This allows users to automatically gain a friend (an official account) upon creation, enabling immediate interaction and increasing the chance to discover the product's core value.
In addition to the Magic Traveler, we developed the "Magic Tree Hole" feature. This allows users to share worries previously recorded via Heartseeds, which are sent randomly as "fruits." When a recipient resonates with the shared emotion, the two parties have the opportunity to become 'Forest Friends,' thus scaling positive companionship and community interaction.
2) Redefining the Applicable User Segment (Ethical Pivot)
Following consultation with professional psychological counselors, we learned that individuals diagnosed with clinical depression (per DSM-5) require intervention and ongoing observation from specialized therapists, which cannot be sufficiently provided by peer support alone. We therefore removed "DSM-5 diagnosed individuals" from our primary target segment of emotional distress. We planned to enhance the screening and referral mechanisms in subsequent features to ensure diagnosed patients receive appropriate professional treatment and protection.
Positive User Reception Post-Iteration
After completing the crucial iterations, we conducted internal testing with our target users. The design received overwhelmingly positive reception, which further validated our concept and allowed us to finalize the scope for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Comprehensive Design Guideline
By defining a complete design system, I was able to organize UI components within the complex gamified structure. This also facilitated more efficient communication with the engineering team, significantly boosting the product’s development efficiency.
A Profound Learning Experience
This project marked the fastest growth period for my UX capabilities, yet it remains the most regretful journey. Ultimately, Hearest App was completed as an MVP but never launched due to the team dissolving.
This experience enlightened me on two invaluable lessons:
1) The Mindset Disconnect: From Qualitative Insight to Quantitative Validation
One of my biggest skill gaps at the time was the failure to effectively validate efficacy versus concept. While we conducted deep user research in the project's early stages, I completely lacked a data-driven mindset when we entered the iteration phase and did not know how to define success.
If I were to approach this project again, I would define clear Success Metrics (SMART goals) with the team before any MVP development. For instance:
Hypothesis A Validation (Activation Rate): To verify if the high-threshold healing was transformed into low-threshold daily action, we would track the percentage of new users who plant their first Heartseed within 7 days (> X%).
Hypothesis B Validation (Feature Frequency): To verify if the platform offers a suitable interaction medium for all three roles, we would track the ratio of 'Watering' to 'Messaging' to ensure low-pressure interactions were the primary activity.
General Health Metric: Utilize Week 1 Retention Rate to validate product stickiness and initial value alignment.
Qualitative feedback tells us why users like or dislike a design; quantitative data tells us if that design effectively solves their fundamental problem. This realization marks my critical transition from a UI Designer to a strategic UX / Product Designer.
2) Failure to Establish a Sustainable Team Structure
Our Systemic Failure:
Lack of Commercial Contract: We (myself included) avoided discussing finances and critically failed to establish a fair equity and profit-sharing mechanism with our key technical partner (the engineer) at the project's inception.
Consequence: This resulted in an extreme imbalance of power and motivation within the team. The engineer had no commercial incentive to remain, as their professional needs were no longer being met within a sustained financial framework.
The Key Learning: Therefore, early in the project initiation phase, the designer must facilitate a critical discussion with the PM and engineer to align on 'people' and incentives before developing the 'product.' This ensures the team operates under a shared, sustainable structure of motivation.