MVP version of an app for a private entrepreneur, aimed at securing funding for a clinical trial.
Client
Aviv Kushnir and the Geha Mental Health Center.
Fields
A digital tool for emotional processing, utilizing techniques from the worlds of psychotherapy and psychodrama.
The project aims to assist individuals seeking mental health support through public health funds. Many applicants face long wait times before receiving professional care. Wellplay bridges the gap between the initial request and professional treatment, allowing users to begin personal emotional processing immediately.
The significant innovation of Wellplay is providing a digital platform for high-quality, personal psychodrama therapy. Traditionally, psychodrama requires a physical space and live interaction between multiple participants. Wellplay innovatively adapts this experience into a personal virtual training session that users can access anytime, anywhere, without needing a human facilitator. Users create characters that function as part of life scenes reflecting personal conflicts, creating a space to explore emotional and psychological issues in a uniquely interactive way.
The solution is designed to integrate into the mental health system, with a focus on public health funds. The platform enables mental health institutions to provide a hybrid response that includes initial emotional support for those on waiting lists, strengthens traditional therapy, and provides a solution for those who have exhausted their treatment eligibility.
Challenges
Sensitive information provided in a sensitive state.
Handling such sensitive information is challenging in several respects. First and foremost is the user's emotional state, which may be closed and blocked, or highly vulnerable and exposed. From a technical perspective, our responsibility is to protect and secure the data and adapt the environment so the user feels safe and open enough to delve into the process and derive value from it. Data privacy is a vast field, and due to our close work with health funds and the need to meet the highest legal standards, we had to dive deep into it.
Solution Approach
Understanding the context and adapting the digital experience while maintaining data privacy.
A significant challenge in this project was conceptual. While working on the venture, we had to adopt an entirely different approach to user experience. Context, which is so crucial to consider when designing digital experiences, plays a major role here. For example, while in some processes we aim to 'minimize clicks,' here the picture is almost the opposite. Emotional processes require moments of pause and longer durations; the language and tone of the copy must be gentler and softer. All this is to approach users and a complex subject while still encouraging them to take action. Constant communication with Clalit's information security teams helped us handle sensitive and personal data. We treated user openness with the utmost seriousness to protect their privacy. To resolve the privacy issue, we created an information architecture where the data provided by the user is stored solely on the device and not on any external server. The information provided is anonymized and encrypted, making it impossible to identify a specific user through the data. We implemented two-factor authentication in the app to further protect the information. Fundamentally, it was important for us to clarify to users that the experience is ephemeral and cannot be retrieved or accessed after the fact.
Result
Securing funding for the venture from health funds, the Israel Innovation Authority, and the University of Haifa.
The project was received with great enthusiasm by investors! As an experimental experience, we managed to achieve an impressive result that respects the users and their data—one we can stand behind and hope will help as many people as possible who are in emotional distress.
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