Product Design Case Study

feARless

First Place
Protohacks 2022

Nicolas Candelaria

Product Designer

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01
Overview
02
Target Market
03
Design Concept
04
Business Model
05
Implementation
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Through exposure therapy, feARless leverages extended reality to treat mental health disorders and phobias. The feARless concept is my submission to the Protohacks 2022 Hackathon hosted by UBC and Apply Digital where my team received first place.

Duration

2 days
February 6 - 7, 2022

Role

I was the ux/ui designer for this competition. I primarily focused on the designing and interface conceptualization.

Consider This

  • You live in rural Kamloops and are suffering from social anxiety
  • You are scared to go outside due to potential interactions
  • The covid-19 pandemic makes it hard to leave your house due to restrictions
  • You cannot afford therapy
Statistics:

7%

of North American adults suffer from social anxiety

10%

of North American adults suffer from phobias
The Problem:
  • Exorbitant therapy costs
  • Patients have difficulty getting to therapy offices, especially in rural areas
  • Lack of therapy for phobia specific issues
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Now, more specifically to Canada, 10% suffer from a phobia and there are only 18,800 psychologists certified to provide treatment. This is even more of an issue in rural areas where finding therapists is harder.

Overall, this industry is growing and has a 91 billion dollar market as of 2020 and its compounded annual growth rate is 5.3%, compared to Canada’s 1.3%. However, rural and developing communities are still currently suffering.

1 in 10

Canadians suffer from a phobia

18,800

registered psychologists in Canada

Personas

We took a look at 2 personas to get an idea of the general demographic of our product. I ran an online survey and found 2 participants that we found exhibited the majority of traits among all surveyed. I focused on looking at exactly what they needed from therapy interfaces and the frustrations that they had from existing apps.

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peson

Hi-fi wireframes

Applying our research to the design

We then created hi-fi wireframes that showcased the design vision that we intended.

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Designing the hi-fi wireframes

feARless solves the problem of inaccessible, expensive therapy by allowing therapists to help their patients through extended reality mediums.

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Business Model

  • Allows our customers to start at a low cost, minimizing friction to getting started
  • Incorporating a consumption-based pricing model on average results in a 50% higher revenue multiple premium
  • 39% of SaaS companies charged based on usage, up from 23% in 2014.

VRET Works

  • Patients can experience situations they are afraid of in a controlled situtation minimizing distress..

24%

more likely to improve with VRET in contrast to traditional therapy

$6-$30

average savings per treatment with VRET vs. traditional therapy

Advantages

Our AR platform is accessible anytime and anywhere to anyone with a phone or desktop

Allows differently abled individuals and people who reside in rural areas to access mental health care

Declining cost of VR hardware & software

Can be used to train therapists to increase scalability

Disadvantages

Therapists historically adopt new technology slowly and rely on old practices

Not enough research available could fail to sway therapists

Training required to overcome the learning curve with VR technology; especially difficult for older demographics

Implementation Timeline

Roadmap

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More of my work