Terapie.cz
A web application that connects therapists and their clients
March 2022
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Terapie.cz — Innovating Psychotherapy
Client: Dělám, co můžu — Mental health care NGO
Duration: October 2020 to January 2022
My responsibilities: UX design, visual design
In 2020, the psychotherapist community in the Czech Republic united to offer free mental health support to frontline workers and others affected by the covid-19 pandemic. This project was organized by the NGO Dělám, co můžu. During the project, they built an active community of therapist and discovered a number of opportunities to improve mental health care in the Czech Republic.
The NGO joined their forces with the design & innovation company Stride XL (that's my folks!) and software developers from Notum Technologies. Together, they conducted research among both psychotherapists and their clients and proposed a new service~product that would nurture the therapist community and bridge the gap between therapists and people in need of mental health support.
The Challenge
Goal
Terapie.cz is a place where everyone can find the right mental health support. We help to increase mental health care quality and make therapy accessible.
Users
The first version of the platform was targeted at:
therapists looking for new clients
people looking for a therapist
Context
The research showed us that people struggle to find a good therapist and perceive many barriers in the process of starting therapy. They often don't know where to search for therapists, and even when they do, they wonder how to choose the right one. They are afraid of stigma. They doubt that "talking ever helped anyone."
On the other hand, therapists don't like to do their own marketing and promote their services — they don't have the time and technical skills, and some even consider it immoral. As a result, it is difficult for them to reach new clients. The psychotherapy market is based on personal recommendations.
Our Plan
Build an MVP catalog of therapists in Czechia and get the first 50 psychotherapist on board
Set up a business model and propose premium features for therapists
Gather analytics data and user feedback from both clients and therapists
Design adjustments and new features based on market & user needs
Iterate to provide better service
I had wanted to try psychotherapy for a long time. When I joined the project, it gave me a perfect opportunity to go for it. So I put myself in the shoes of our users and started looking for a therapist. And the struggle was real. I hesitated. I wasn't sure how to choose the right person. I felt nervous before the first therapy session. I wondered if we were a good match... (Sounds a bit like dating, huh? 😅)
I observed parts of my first therapy experience with the eyes of a researcher, curious about my emotions, motivations, goals, and frustrations. I started writing a diary and mapping my therapy-seeking journey. This helped me to understand our users on a whole new level.
"I was afraid of the unknown: What does a therapy session look like? What should I talk about? Are my problems even real?"
The App
The MVP contained two sides of the app: the public (client) side and the therapist side. The main goal of the public side was to help people start therapy. It included the following features:
On the other hand, the therapist side focused on setting up a therapist profile and communication with clients. Here we addressed therapists' frustration we discovered in the research: therapists want to have their personal profile on the internet (and reach new clients) but they are often uncomfortable around technologies and don't have any marketing knowledge.
What happened next
12 months after the project launch, we had over 130 therapist on our website providing both online and in-person therapy. (That's a success! Czech psychotherapy market is in its infancy. 🍼)
As of March 2022, the number is around 200 therapists on board.
In one year, over 2 500 people found a therapist on our website — including 32 people who couldn't afford therapy on their own but we were able to help them with our charitable fundraising.
We started providing mental wellbeing support for companies and their employees. Thanks to our services, companies can offer mental health care as one the employees' benefits. (And we built a UI for that, too! 🖌️)
We offer educational content and organize frequent events, such as lectures, workshops, and webinars. In total, our webinars were seen by over 200k people.
Afterword
Terapie.cz turned out to be a project the whole team loved. And I did too. It had a wonderful purpose and allowed me to connect my knowledge of mental health with my design skills.
Our workflow was start-up-ish. I often had to balance cost and benefit — sure, I could come up with complex interactions and intricate designs that would take ages to code, but would that bring more value than a simple yet functional design that we could develop fast? So, instead of handing off my wildest design dreams, I always asked the developers for feedback on my early drafts and together we made sure they were viable. That was my lesson learned.
Thank you for reading! Any questions or remarks? Feel free to reach out to me, I'm always up for a chat 🤗
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