Serene in the City
By Amy Craig-Wood Digital Design Final Year Project 2017/2018
A self-care mental health application.
City dwellers have an almost 40% increased risk of depression, over 20% more of anxiety, and double the risk of developing schizophrenia compared to people who live in the countryside. As someone who has grow up in the countryside always wanting to live in the city I found these statistics seriously off putting. Therefore, I have used this project to design a wellbeing application targeted at urban dwellers. This application, which I have named ‘Serene in the City’ encourages users to daily log their mood, notes, keep active by visiting their local parks and remember to complete their self care tasks.
To ensure this app provided features proven to benefit mental health I made sure to undergo extensive research. This included researching causes of mental health issues and ways of managing it, both generally and then specifically to urban environments. I also carried out a survey of 150 people to find out how they manage their mental health on a day to day basis, also providing me with a list of tried and tested self-care tips.
I then designed and tested a prototype of the application as well as developing the initial structure using React-Native. I now aim to finish developing the Serene app and launch it on the app stores over summer.
