Week 5: Conducting user research interviews with teen stakeholders

This week I conducted Gieia’s user research interviews with twelve teen stakeholders. I had initially intended to conduct these interviews with sixteen teen stakeholders, but throughout the two week user research period two teens were unable to access the app due to older IOS models and two teens were unresponsive.  

Upon conducting these interviews, I was very pleased to generally receive positive responses to Gieia as well as insightful feedback and suggestions for modifying the app. Some of the aspects which teens particularly responded positively to were Gieia’s ease of use, design, clarity, and the breadth of tools offered, namely the educational resources, coping mechanisms videos, and support resources (including hotlines and support groups). Additionally, I was pleased to learn that most teen stakeholders believed that teens would feel inclined to honestly answer the mental health and substance use questionnaires within Gieia. An aspect which teens did not respond positively to was Gieia’s requirement to complete the mental health questionnaire before the substance use questionnaire. One of the suggested modifications to Gieia was to provide more questionnaires thus assessing a wider breadth of mental health challenges such as OCD and anxiety.

Additionally, almost all teens responded well to my intended future modifications to Gieia, thus validating that Gieia’s intended direction is in line with teens’ wants and needs. In particular, almost all teens responded with immense enthusiasm to the inclusion of the ability for teens to track their mental wellness over time with Gieia. 

Next week, I look forward to transcribing the interviews based on the audio recordings derived from each interview (upon teen stakeholders’ consent). Based on these transcripts, I will also input each teen stakeholder’s response to each question into the spreadsheet that I previously created which maps teen stakeholders’ responses to each interview question. This spreadsheet will later allow me to better analyze which aspects teens positively and negatively responded to within Gieia.