Singapore Prison Service (SPS) is the organization in Singapore that is responsible for managing prisons and inmates‘ welfare. One of the biggest challenges that they face is to help the inmates manage a good mental well being while facing tough circumstances and come out as stronger and better human beings at the end of their jail terms.
SPS reached out to us seeking a solution to help the inmates build a more positive and stronger mind set. They wanted a refreshing change to how they managed their mental well-being.
This project was truly extraordinary as I had the opportunity to go beyond my comfort zone, be in a space that I had only seen in fiction, and most importantly design a solution that would lead to a meaningful impact in inmates‘ lives.
This was a 3 week UX design challenge that I worked with 4 other team members and the amazing psychology team from SPS who provided the mental health content.
I actively participated in the end-to-end UX design process, including user interviews, UX/UI design in particularly onboarding flow and design system, research, comparative analysis, and stakeholder management.
Many inmates in Singapore prison lack accessible resources to refresh their coping skills learned during incarceration, contributing to difficulties in rehabilitation and increased risk of recidivism.
How might we design a solution that effectively engages inmates and helps them refresh their coping skills learned during incarceration, thereby supporting their rehabilitation and reducing the risk of recidivism?
I look forward to implement our solution, which will potentially achieve:
We adopted the double diamond approach to guide our design process:
1
• Research
• User interviews
• Comparative analysis
2
• Persona
• Ideation
• How might we
3
• User flows
• Design system
• Prototype
4
• Usability tests
• Iteration
• Stakeholder management
To determine what would make the inmates use our app and make it a habit, we looked at apps that do it successfully.
The main user base in the Singapore prison is mostly male with up to Secondary education, and a median age range of 20-55 year old, with drug-related offences as the most common culprit of putting them in incarceration. This was also the demographic of our interviewees during user research.
I have omitted real interview data from this case study due to NDA.
To understand user motivations, pain points, needs and wants, we conducted face-to-face user interviews with 12 inmates in the prison.
Stepping into the prison for the interviews filled me with excitement and nervousness. A particular inmate‘s story struck me and I felt really bad for him. I decided to turn my empathy to impact here in helping to build a product that would improve their lives.
After synthesizing our research findings, we identified two main personas for this case study.
👤 David is disengaged and bored with the mundane prison life.
👤 John is hopeful and seeks to make a positive change in his life.
After synthesizing research findings, we gathered and brainstormed the following solutions for the MVP.
Game-based learning to keep
users engaged.
Gamification to incentivise users with low motivation.
Journaling to empower personal growth and improve mental wellness.
Our research led us to recognise the potential of gamification to engage inmates in a meaningful and interactive way, so we adopted Yu-Kai Chou's Octalysis framework of gamification to implement in our design.
Yu-Kai Chou is the author and pioneer of gamification, in which he discovered the behavioural science behind the 8 core drives within us that motivate us towards certain activities as seen in the chart below.
I proposed a couple of typefaces for the team to vote, and amongst them were Poppins, Rubik and Roboto.
Rubik is a modern san serif typeface with slightly rounded corners. Rubik was inspired after the actual Rubik’s cube. It was a natural choice for us with its legibility and fun look, suitable for our gamified learning app.
Our personas were often feeling stressed and anxious, hence I selected these colours and got the team to align through voting:
Consistent UI elements are key to a great user experience. I helped create reusable and scalable components in which the client could easily tweak, optimise and use in the future after we handover.
I worked on the onboarding flow, which included welcome message, feature highlight, image selection, progress indicator and personalisation.
The progressive disclosure utilised for the onboarding reduced cognitive overload for first time users. The personalisation gave them empowerment and ownership.
Here are some game screens or lessons I worked on. We chose the game to help train the mind for focus, while the meditation helps train the mind to relax, relieving boredom and anxiety for our personas.
We conducted 2 rounds of usability testing to sort out any potential issues and iterated our prototype accordingly. These are some of the results:
Users seemed to be unsure of how to use the homepage.
Created a tutorial to guide first time users.
Users seemed to take a long time to read the lessons and were lost, signifying a heavy cognitive load.
We reduced the text, and reduced the steps to get to completion, from 7 to 5.
The agreement was to carry out user testing with the Figma prototype on the tablet that the inmates use daily. However, things did not go to plan:
🥺 Tablet was unavailable, so we had to use their internal laptop (security reasons)
🥺 Limited internet access for our figma prototype to work smoothly
🥺 Inmates were on a tight schedule
We ran out of time and made the best of the situation and carried out the user testing with only screenshots of the prototype. It was definitely not ideal, but we had to work within limitations, and most importantly still achieved results.
I enjoy having a growth mindset and was excited to discover the Octalysis framework of gamification, and enjoyed practicing critical thinking and strategic skills when coming across limitations during the project.
We recognised the literacy challenges faced by senior inmates, and regrettably, not everyone could be accommodated during the usability testing of the prototype. As someone empathetic to users' needs, I advocate for prioritising designing for accessibility for future iterations, to ensure inclusivity and usability for all.
I hope these examples demonstrate my potential as a valuable contributor to your company. To find out more on how I can help your business grow using my design expertise, please contact me with the details below.
