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AFH wanted to broaden its impact, and that’s where our team came in. Our mission? Build a personalized wellness platform, rooted in anime, so fans can stay engaged and find support wherever they are.
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Match with licensed mental health professionals who not only understand your struggles but also share your love for anime, making therapy feel safe, relatable, and less intimidating.
Turn wellness practices into interactive, anime-inspired ‘trainings’ tailored to you, making building healthy habits engaging, relatable, and fun.
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Practice emotional regulation through guided anime reflections, then share your journey with a supportive community of fellow fans to build connection and belonging.
As a novice in anime culture, it was important for me to first delve into the literature and existing surveys/quotes provided by AFH, to gain a better understanding of this domain and how it intersects with mental wellness.
Hardcore anime fans can experience isolation and increased mental health risks due to the difficulty in finding like-minded peers and the stigma associated with anime fandom.
Anime's global community offers a sense of belonging and social connection. Fans bond over shared interests and support each other, which is immensely beneficial for mental well-being.
Many stories focus on themes of resilience, personal growth, and overcoming adversity, which is often inspiring and empowering for fans struggling with their mental health.
Anime is utilized in some types of therapy, especially when clients are fans of the genre. It can be a medium for exploring emotions, discussing difficult topics, or building rapport.
We conducted 20+ semi-structured interviews with anime fans who are currently struggling with, or working to improve, their mental wellness.
Our Big Three
The 3 most important things we wanted to learn:
We found anime fans not only use anime as a coping mechanism but are also intentional about their viewing choices. They select specific anime to find solace, escape, or emotional support.
Many individuals mentioned that they turn to online platforms and anime events to find their community, places where they can truly be themselves and forge lasting friendships.
Participants understand the negative impact of their unhealthy habits, but struggle to change, often due to limited support or knowledge, stress, or inconsistency in routines.
Hardcore anime fans we spoke to were less likely to stay engaged with solutions that required a monetary subscription or didn't incorporate their interests.
"I have a major mental disorder and anime gets me through each night. I can forget about my problems at least until I stop watching"
"Welcome to the NHK helped me with finding the motivation to keep applying for jobs and not just stay home after graduating"
"...having anime characters with similar stories I could relate to gave me hope to keep going and helped me realize that the rough times will pass"
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Gavin is a 22-year-old introvert with a deep passion for anime, self-identifying as an 'Otaku'.
Otaku is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “nerd” or “geek.” In Japan it implies that someone doesn’t have a social life because of an obsessive hobby (often anime/manga). In the US the connotation of “otaku” is less negative, and often hardcore anime fans in the US refer to themselves as an otaku.
Many anime enthusiasts feel isolated, facing unique mental health challenges exacerbated by a lack of support. This results in a self-perpetuating negative feedback loop. There's a need to clarify the benefits of self-care, offer tailored actionable tools, and replace the negative cycle with a supportive, positive feedback loop.
Now that we had a clearer view of our target audience's needs, we were able to identify where they overlapped with AFH's goals.
To create a simple prototype that delivers maximum value and helps us assess product-market fit, we narrowed our focus to features that help users experience the benefits of self-care and feel accomplished. Getting this right first could make the idea of reaching out to a therapist less intimidating down the line.
We looked at the top-ranking ‘self-care’ apps and identified a common feature offering that centered around habit formation. I paid particular attention to how they applied gamification and behavioral science principles, and how their feature offerings align with our target audience's needs.
Users are provided with the option to set small, daily tasks that contribute to their overall goals. Beginning with small steps builds momentum and is an effective way to foster habit formation.
Users embark on a journey within the app, where self-care activities are framed as missions or quests. This narrative-driven approach immerses users in a storyline, promoting engagement.
Existing apps lack personalized content that resonates with niche interests, like anime.
How Might We present the ritual of building habits by doing tasks in a fun, actionable, and engaging way that truly resonates with our target audience?
To kickstart our ideation phase, we facilitated a cross-functional 'How Might We' workshop, bringing together the expertise of both design and development teams. Our goal was to brainstorm features that address our core hypothesis.
Users will be led through a series of questions to better understand their needs.
Based off answers to the onboarding questionnaire, users receive self-care recommendations.
Users create the character that represents the protagonist of their self-care journey.
Users receive achievements when completing habits and can track their progress over time.
Our strategy involved unveiling a prototype at the NYC Anime Convention to conduct real-time concept testing among a large population of our target audience.
I outlined the happy path to illustrate the user's journey within the app, guiding users to a stress-reducing exercise during the high-energy, and overwhelming, environment of an anime convention.
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Success metrics: at least 60% of participants report feeling less stressed after engaging in the activity, and at least 50% of participants express interest in doing the activity again.
With the defined the MVP criteria and flow, the design team began sketching out the vision. We conducted a crazy 8 exercise for each feature to get our creative juices flowing and arrived at a consensus about which ideas we'd base the wireframes on.
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With our task flow and sketches, our team created the following wireframes to solidify our ideas, ensure that the information architecture we derived made sense, and communicate critical functionalities for the dev team. In order to prioritize content, we began with a mobile-first approach.
Clear, actionable guidance
Why? This screen not only explains box breathing but also highlights its benefits. This approach empowers users with the knowledge of how the practice can positively impact their well-being.
Box Breathing exercise
Why? For its simplicity, proven effectiveness, and visualization potential. Most importantly, it's quick and discreet, allowing users to practice in a crowded convention without feeling self-conscious.
Achievement
Why? Users are rewarded immediately after their first self-care task. This approach reinforces goal achievement, boosts motivation, and increases the likelihood of repeated behavior.
Creating a style guide that was authentic to anime culture would be crucial to our product’s success, so it heavily informed early decisions related to the UI design, colors, typography, language, and tone. Fortunately, we had a very talented artist onboard that could bring our ideas to life.
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Our design decisions were heavily influenced by the artistic styles found in Japanese manga and the calming imagery typical of the 'healing anime' subgenre, Iyashikei. Central to our design ethos was the integration of AFH’s mascot, Ki-Chan, who acts as a playful and familiar guide throughout the user’s experience.
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As I prototyped the breathing exercise for testing, I focused on simplicity, clarity, and comfort. Try it out below!
To improve this experience in the next iteration, I would try to make the transitions smother and include calming background music to make the experience more immersive.
Since the product team was unable to attend the convention, we used AFH volunteers to watch and note attendees' reactions. Their enthusiasm led to hundreds of sign-ups, although a misplaced iPad delayed research recruitment. Despite this, we kept up our momentum, refining our design for the next convention.
"The best part of the app was the breathing exercise. It was straightforward to follow. I think visually the App needs work and would like to see more exercises "
"The box breathing was very direct and easy to follow, and it made me calm and less asthmatic"
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Geek therapists are mental health professionals who integrate geek culture, like video games and anime, into therapy, making it more relatable and engaging for clients who are fans of these genres. We caught a lot of attention from these therapists during WonderCon and we were fortunate to be able to partner with 4 of them.
To ensure our mental wellness app effectively integrates anime culture and aligns with evidence-based practices, each designer conducted a 1:1 semi-structured interview with an expert. Organizing our findings into an affinity map helped us surface common themes and insights. Below is a feature iteration inspired by our findings.
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We discovered a recurring recommendation: utilize anime in a similar way our experts do, by allowing users to draw parallels between the content in anime and their own experiences or feelings. This insight that led us to our second hypothesis:
We conducted pre-test interviews to gather feedback on previous experiences with mental health apps, understand what attracts viewers to anime, and assess openness to using anime as a self-care tool. Post-test interviews were then used to gauge interest, capture likes and dislikes, and collect overall impressions and suggestions for improvement.
"My concern is that in the current phrasing of 'productive' or 'didn't work out' to be further stigmatizing" - Kristi (geek therapist)
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"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do now" - Nick (usability test participant)
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Initially, asynchronous schedules and remote work led me to work in isolation, with little iteration between sprints. This approach eventually resulted in extra work down the road. I learned that early and frequent feedback from users and diverse perspectives from teammates are key to efficient design and innovation.
From the start, we prioritized accessibility in our design. Yet, discussions with experts highlighted the risks of not fully considering the variety of mental health experiences. This realization underlined the need to include a diverse range of research participants and showed us that every design element, from colors to content, must be chosen carefully and thoughtfully.
Working on a UX team for the first time taught me the importance of involving the development team early and often. This ongoing collaboration not only promoted creativity but also allowed us to immediately know what was actually feasible.