Problem Statement

Art Therapists have a hard time to deliver their sessions online using the existing technology available. 8 out of 13 Art Therapists interviewed expressed that they have to use multiple apps to deliver their sessions online. The findings from the interviews revealed that majority of the Art Therapists expressed their willingness towards the use of digital technology in Art Therapy but were dissatisfied with the existing avenues.

Research Objectives

1. To understand the perception that Art Therapists have towards Digital Art Therapy

2. To explore the use of digital technologies in delivery of Art Therapy 

3. To design a user centred prototype designated for Art Therapy that gives Art Therapists and the clients a feeling of an in-person session

4. To evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the app through user testing and applying the findings towards a detailed design.

My Approach

The journey began with realising an issue, identifying the issue, conducting first and second hand research, competitor analysis, data collection, analysing the data, creating personas, following the conceptual design process, converging on a design, creating wireframes and finalising the interactive prototype through the iteration process.

Understanding user needs

13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Art Therapists over a period of three weeks via Zoom for primary data research. They were recruited from either established organisations or via social media platforms. Due to time limitation and permission from the university’s ethics committee required, Art Therapy clients being part of the vulnerable community, were not interviewed for this study. Although, their input would have been valuable Art Therapists provided enough information from the patient’s perspective without disclosing any identifiable data to draft a conclusion. 

The semi-structured format of the interviews was ideal as it allowed me to keep the conversation relevant to the topic but conversely allow the respondents to speak in detail on the issues and introduce more topics relevant to the theme. After thorough interviews with the Art Therapists, I found that the themes were being repeated, which informed that the saturation point was achieved. At this point, I felt enough data was gathered to move onto the next stage. The interviews revealed a mixed bag of experiences during the lockdown.

The interviews were transcribed and codes were efficiently extracted and drawn using the thematic analysis technique helped guide wading through the large and complex chunks of data. The key findings drawn from each code were noted and used as takeaways for the design phase of the project.

Key Research Insights

1. 2 out of 13 Art Therapists declared that they use art making apps

2. 8 out of 13 Art Therapists expressed that they use screen sharing apps to deliver their sessions online like Skype and Zoom.

3. 7 out of 13 participants see potential for Digital Art Therapy and 1 participant went to say, “Digital Art Therapy is a silent giant.”

4. 10 out 13 participants expressed that the clients they work with respond well to screens but the lack of functionalities results in a reluctance of using technologies in Art Therapy.

5. Cumbersome process for the clients and the Art Therapists due to the limited functionality in the available options; the most important being Art Therapists’ inability to see the client’s facial cues and their work at the same time.

6. The findings from the interviews also revealed that majority of the Art Therapists expressed their willingness towards the use of digital technology in Art Therapy but were dissatisfied with the existing avenues.

Understanding the competitors

Since there are no dedicated Art Therapy apps available in the market, the competitor analysis was done with the closest indirect competing art apps to understand the usability of the art making apps available in the market and in order to find which of the functionality could work well in my design.

A competitor analysis of the six most popular apps in the Apple App Store was carried out by 3 established Art Therapists and also self-evaluated by myself. The idea behind having Art Therapists test the apps was to understand their perspective and the client’s perspective of the usability and functionality of the app. 

How were the apps shortlisted:

1. From user research

2. Their rating on the App Store

3. The top ones that appear when a search for an art app on the Apple app Store is carried out

What was the process followed:

1. The participants were asked to spend 10 to 15 minutes to independently explore the chosen apps and to either complete at least one art directive or just draw what they are feeling on each app.

2. The participants were requested to think aloud about the functionality they like or don’t like and talk me through their approach.

3. After the data was gathered from the sessions, an analysis of these interviews was carried out and the findings were then used towards marking them against the design requirements. 

Takeaway for the design phase:

1. The app should have tools available to the user as allowed by their Art Therapist 

2. The app should be easy to understand, use and navigate 

3. App should be free for the client to use 

4. App should have undo/redo functionality 

5. App should shows an image of the selected tool, helps the user build a connection.

6. The app should have set shapes for the users to work with.

7. The app should imitate the texture and the spread of different materials 

Personas

After a detailed analysis of the results, user research and critical context, a pattern emerged of characteristics of the potential users of the Art Therapy app, which were then refined and used to develop personas. The scope of the personas was narrowed down as much as possible by giving them real life characteristics to ensure that the personas are more specific and are in line with the target users of the app (Salazar, 2021), which helped the researcher in the design phase of the project. Three personas were created for the purposes of this report based with specific attributes and characteristics derived and observed from the collected data. Out of the three personas, two primary personas were selected.

Goal

The goal of this project was to build a novel prototype app in collaboration with established Art Therapists that enables adaptability of technology in Art Therapy, has easy learnability and enables Art Therapists to conduct sessions remotely or in-person with their established techniques.

Design requirements

Design requirements were deduced based on the information gathered and analysed from the user research, competitor analysis and literature review

1.     Allow screen sharing

2.     Allow video calling while in session

3.     Personalized Notes or Messages

4.     Multi-Sensory Elements

5.     Customisability of available tools and tasks by the Art Therapists

6.     The app to have a journaling function

7.     Mindful activities like colouring a Mandala

8.     The app is easy to use and navigate through

9.     Allow users the undo, redo and resizing functionality

10.  The app should show a visual representation of the selected tool to help the user build a connection

Conceptual Design

Once the primary personas and the design requirements were finalised and conceptual design phase came into play using a divergent-convergent strategy. Several ideas were brainstormed, and sketches were made based on the personas, user journeys and the defined problem statement.

The ideas were critiqued strictly to ensure that I am not restricted from exploring other ideas that could result in an unexpected value. Analogical reasoning, constraint removal method and worst possible idea were applied during the process. Following this, I started to narrow down the options using convergent thinking. After a thorough analysis of the conceptual designs, the ideas were narrowed down to three as listed below: 

1. An app with customisable tools 

2. An app enabling Art Therapists to send mindful activities to clients 

3. An app that helps collaboration and interaction between Art Therapists and clients in an online setting 

The options were narrowed to three ideas using critical thinking, considering the design requirements, feasibility, and the time constraint of the project. User journeys were created for the chosen ideas. Each idea was then evaluated with regards to strengthening the relationship between the Art Therapists and the clients and also to ensure to eliminate the pain points Art Therapists currently face with the existing technology available to them.

As a result, I decided to take idea 3 forward to the design phase using the User Centred Design approach.

Final Design

Once the idea was finalised, the final design process began. Both, low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes were created and the evaluation and iterative process was done with Art Therapists and proxy participants. Since the Art Therapy app has two users; Art Therapists and their clients, different wireframes were made for both users due to the different functionalities available to them. 

The prototypes that were created followed a user centric design approach and were based on the conceptual design idea and the design requirements that were established from the user research phase of the study. Some challenging aspects of the final design phase were to ensure that the sign up process was easy and efficient for clients and the process of granting access of the app to them, the dashboard and the ability for Art Therapists to customise the tools available to the clients. A calming colour theme was decided upon which was then followed throughout the app. The final design was made using Adobe XD and features the functionalities that were finalised from the user testing sessions. The two working prototypes enabled the users to have an interactive experience of the potential app.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Low Fidelity wireframes were created next to illustrate each interface screen that I intended to use for user testing later, as well as the navigational and informational components of each screen.

Since the Art Therapy app has two users; Art Therapists and their clients, different wireframes were made for both users due to the different functionalities available to them.

The low fidelity prototypes were iterated with Art Therapists to identify the optimal layout, information architecture of the digital system, critique the design and see if  any additional features can be added or to improve the existing ones.

Once the iteration was complete, the final low fidelity prototypes were produced showcasing the key distinctive functionalities of the prototypes and the information architecture of the system, one for each user interface.

Since the app was being made for iPads, this was a key factor kept in mind while drafting a design. After this process was completed, high fidelity prototypes were then designed based on the findings.

At this point, I had a good understanding of how the final product should look like so I started on producing the high fidelity prototype with semi-interactivity using Adobe XD on an iPad template. Keeping into consideration that the functionality of the app differs for Art Therapists and for clients, two prototypes were created.

The prototypes that were created followed a user centric design approach and were based on the conceptual design idea and the design requirements that were established from the user research.

Some challenging aspects of the detailed design phase were to ensure that the sign-up process was easy and efficient for clients and the process of granting access of the app to them, the dashboard, and the ability for Art Therapists to customise the tools available to the clients. A calming colour theme was decided upon which was then followed throughout the app.

To ensure that the platform is secure, only clients who have been registered with an Art Therapist and have been granted access to the app by their Art Therapist via a passcode, would be able to use the app under their supervision.

Usability Testing

Once the initial design was created, the next phase of the process was to conduct a usability testing of the prototype to uncover usability issues with the app, identify opportunities to improve the design and to observe the user’s attitude and behaviour towards the prototype app.

How was this process conducted?
A series of tasks were created for the participants to perform on the prototype app. Participants were observed and their feedback listed while they completed the tasks. Follow up questions were also asked by the researcher to elicit details from the user. The quantitative data gathered from the evaluation sessions was then analysed and used to iterate the design. Due to participants being geographically disperse, remote moderated usability technique was used for these sessions using Zoom as a medium to facilitate the sessions.

The main aims of the usability testing were as below:

• To understand the participant’s first impressions of the prototype app.

• To observe if the participants understand the functionalities that are available to them and whether they think it would benefit them.

• To observe if the clients would like this app to be incorporated in their therapy sessions.

• To observe whether the participants were able to complete the given tasks.

• To gauge the satisfaction level of the participants towards a task.

• To observe if Art Therapists see this as a beneficial tool to help delivery of Art Therapy during COVID-19

User testing was conducted with 6 Art Therapists and 6 clients in total with a duration of 30 to 45 minutes per session and the sessions were audio and video recorded. The recruitment was done from participants who were part of the user research, art therapy groups on social media and from friends and family. I abstained from recruiting real clients who have underlying medical conditions because they fall under the vulnerable population.

The data gathered from the evaluation sessions was then analysed. The success criteria of the evaluation session was whether or not the participants were able to complete the given tasks error free and their satisfaction level. A set of questions directed towards their satisfaction level and their general feedback of the prototype were also asked after the tasks were completed.

Evaluation Results

Once the usability issues identified from the first testing were taken into consideration, the high fidelity wireframes were iterated. The iterated wireframes were then used to conduct a second usability testing to identify any further problems that were missed in the first testing phase. The goal was to find out whether the aims set out for the usability testing are met. The results of the second evaluation process had significantly better results than the first evaluation conducted. 

1. Out of 4 Art Therapists, 2 were able to complete all tasks comfortably.

2. 2 were able to complete 6 out of 7 tasks comfortably.

3. 1 was not able to complete Task 6 and 1 was able to complete Task 6 with assistance from the researcher.

4. On the clients’ front, all 3 clients were able to complete all 6 tasks without any assistance.

Post Study Questionnaire results: 

Out of 7 participants recruited for the second usability testing, 4 were Art Therapists and 3 were proxy clients mimicking real Art Therapy clients. The responses gathered some rich dataset. The responses of the post study questionnaire provided insights on the user’s perspective and satisfaction level about the app’s functionalities. 

System Usability Survey

In addition, a post study questionnaire and a SUS (System Usability Survey) Questionnaire were also sent to the client via Google Form to the participants to fill and submit online.

Why SUS:
SUS is one of the most well-known and reliable post-test assessment questionnaire. The responses to the SUS questionnaire produces users’ satisfaction rate about the different functionalities of the app. The questions were directed towards specific functionalities of the app with options to rate the functionalities on a Likert scale to ensure effective evaluation of the responses.

What did I find out?

The responses gathered from Art Therapist’s post study questionnaire revealed that Art Therapists were move inclined towards being satisfied with the available functionalities on the app. 100% of the participants revealed that they were very satisfied with the ability to video call while screen sharing with the clients during the session. 75% of the participants were very satisfied with journaling function. 100% of the clients were very satisfied with the ability to book a session via the app, where as 50% of clients rated the schedule function to be satisfactory with 50% rating it at 5. Across 40 responses recorded from Art Therapists, 72.5% responses were recorded as being very satisfied with the functionalities across the board, 25% for being satisfied and 2.5% on a neutral response, which was recorded for the multisensory element in the app. 

Similarly, the responses received from the clients in regards to the functionalities available to them revealed a broader inclination towards being very satisfied. Out of 24 responses recorded, 95.83% of the client responses were of being very satisfied with the app offering. Only 4.16% of the recorded responses revealed that the user was satisfied with the optional video calling option while screen sharing. 

SUS Questionnaire Results:

The SUS Questionnaire was sent via link to the participants after the second usability testing was concluded. Once all the responses were collected, an Excel sheet of the raw data was extracted from Google Forms. From the extracted data, a SUS Raw Score and SUS Final Score was calculated using the formulae to extract scores for usability and learnability. The SUS Final Score was the averaged out to get a SUS Score of 85, which classifies as Acceptable and Best Imaginable (Sauro, 2018) in terms system usability proving the system to be of an effective user design. 

This dissertation project was awarded a distinction.