
Designing a product with mental health issues in mind - robin_reala
https://monzo.com/blog/2017/01/27/designing-product-mental-health-mind/
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rrggrr
I wonder how many marriages, business partnerships and friendships were saved
by Gmail's "Undo Send" feature.

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Mz
I applaud their effort, but I find some of the directions taken somewhat
disturbing.

I think having the option to double check late night purchases is cool, but
shouldn't be so strongly framed as being aimed at bipolar individuals. I
wonder how much "drunk dialing" online shopping also occurs in the middle of
the night.

But I would be really weirded out by getting messages prompted by a missed
paycheck. If I am living paycheck to paycheck, my first missed paycheck is a
dire problem and it won't be solved by trying to budget better. That income
needs to be replaced, and it is not my bank's job to address that. Not at all.

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throwaway1280
This is amazing. One of my friends group was diagnosed as manic depressive
recently. They quit their job, and have major issues with spending hundreds of
pounds at a time on random cool gear. This would be a very useful tool to help
them make those impulses less damaging.

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stordoff
> This was all achieved without hindering the experience for those using the
> pills for medical reasons.

FWIW, I suffer from pain in the same joints of my hands, and blister packs
exacerbate it. That's not to say that switching to blister packs for general
use isn't a good thing, just that it isn't a universal positive.

> An example I regularly consider is the UK’s 1998 redesign of Tylenol pill
> packaging.

Seems like a strange way for a UK bank to phrase this - AFAIK, the Tylenol
brand has never been used in the UK.

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TazeTSchnitzel
I wonder if they chose to say “Tylenol” because the brand name is better known
to an American audience than either generic name (paracetamol and
acetaminophen)? It's strange to read as someone from the UK, though, because
here we use the generic name (e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmd9HUkOQHk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmd9HUkOQHk)).
Especially since, as you point out, they are a UK bank.

Personally, that combined with “the UK's” confused me, because why would the
UK government be changing the packaging of a specific brand… do they mean that
the Tylenol manufacturers changed their UK packaging? Turns out, though, that
the UK legislated to change the packaging of paracetamol products
([http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f403](http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f403)).

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bem94
This is fantastic to see. It's a shame that more thought doesn't go into the
accessibility of apps/services in the context of mental health. It's even more
of a shame some of the comments here imply companies shouldn't bother.

I think UX in the context of mental health problems doesn't get nearly enough
thought or effort put into it at the moment, and Monzo deserve a lot of
recognition for what they are trying to do.

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afarrell
I wonder how hard it would be to create an opt-in feature which would prevent
you from spending money from this account at betting shops and casinos.

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notahacker
It's certainly easy enough for them to flag up the UK's bookie and casino
chains, but they'll accept cash...

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empath75
This is really interesting, but man is it going to be a customer service
nightmare to manage.

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cLeEOGPw
First product that comes to mind is facebook and their gender selection.

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Shalhoub
> First product that comes to mind is facebook and their gender selection.

Personally I could care less as to what gender identifier you would want to be
designated as. But I'm sure that the Facebook management would issue much
apologies for causing you such mental distress. Besides, I understand that
once you register, Facebook allows for a custom gender designation:

'Agender, Androgyne, Androgynous, Bigender, Cis, Cisgender, Cis Female, Cis
Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender Female, Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man,
Cisgender Woman, Female to Male, FTM, Gender Fluid, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Intersex, Male to Female,
MTF, Neither, Neutrois, Non-binary, Other, Pangender, Trans, Trans _, Trans
Female, Trans_ Female, Trans Male, Trans* Male, Trans Man, Trans* Man, Trans
Person, Trans* Person, Trans Woman, Trans* Woman, Transfeminine, Transgender,
Transgender Female, Transgender Male, Transgender Man, Transgender Person,
Transgender Woman, Transmasculine, Transsexual, Transsexual Female,
Transsexual Male, Transsexual Man, Transsexual Person, Transsexual Woman, Two-
Spirit'

~~~
teddyh
Fortunately, Facebook has one additional setting: the _None-of-your-business_
setting. You activate it by not having a Facebook account.

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Shalhoub
"there is a challenge and responsibility to build products in a way that
serves and supports customers who are the most vulnerable."

No product is going to cure people of anything and certainly no commercial
company has that kind of capability.

"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them
were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."

For 'digital watch' replace with iPhone, iPad, Playstation etc

[http://aufbix.org/~bolek/download/guide1.pdf](http://aufbix.org/~bolek/download/guide1.pdf)

~~~
onion2k
_No product is going to cure people of anything and certainly no commercial
company has that kind of capability._

I read the line you quoted as saying designers and developers should build
things in ways that don't make life worse. We can't "cure people", but we can
make their lives better by considering their needs. This is true for everyone,
but especially more vulnerable people.

Taking Monzo as an example, they make it _very_ easy to freeze your card if
you lose by enabling a user to do it via their app. And they enable a user to
unfreeze their card if they find it again. Other banks make you telephone a
call centre, go through automated menus, and speak to someone to cancel the
card and then you have to wait days (or weeks..) to get a new one. Someone who
has lost their bank card is already likely to be anxious, so Monzo have made
their life a little better. It's good that they think about these things
rather than just copying the other banks.

