There's a crisis in youth mental health
Maro for Schools is on a mission to help school counselors detect mental health issues early.
I helped design a counselor web platform for
Maro for Schools, 2023 GSV cup winner for EdTech Startups.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Now more than ever, there’s an enormous need for mental health screenings in schools. School counselors bear the brunt of this need. Maro for School wanted my team to design and validate features that would help counselors save time and administer screenings and referrals quickly.
THE OBJECTIVES
The client had 3 objectives for the counselor web platform.
• Make the onboarding process to be easy and efficient.
• Design a screening process for school counselors
• Design a referral process for school counselors
THE APPROACH
We know that counselors are busy people but we needed to dig deeper in their day to day responsibilities. What types of challenges and frustrations do they have? What kind of system are they currently using to administer mental health screenings to their students and the roadblocks they face there. By understanding the deficits they face at work, we can design a better platform that meets their most pressing needs.
MY ROLE
In my role, I led the team to balance the business needs with user’s needs. I shaped strategy through information gathered from competitive analysis, market research stakeholder interviews, research and testing. I synthesized data from user interviews and usability testing and pitched in on journey mappiing, user flows and prototyping.
IMPACT
Ultimately, through my contributions, the platform designed saved counselors time by:
Reducing onboarding
screen by 2/3
1
Prioritizing important features on counselor dashboard
2
Customizing/automizing
features according to counselors’ needs
3
The research from this project helped our client raise venture capital. My team projects
the implementation of these features will increase counselors and schools sign ups as all counselors interviewed expressed interest in the Maro schools platform with these features and currently, a platform like this does not exist for counselors.
DISCOVERY
The client viewed Maro as an all in one platform to help counselors meet the challenges that come with youth mental health.
After our meeting we initiated a heuristic analysis of the Maro platform but discovered that the platform was not active so we pivoted and focused on how to build out the screening, referral and onboarding processes.
Steps to initiate
screenings are
unclear.
How is
guardian
consent
received?
EXISTING MARO WEB PLATFORM - SCREENING PAGE
Is there a
process to
discuss with
guardians
about referrals?
Unclear
how to link
students
with outside
referrals
EXISTING MARO WEB PLATFORM - REFFERALS PAGE
I conducted a market research to understand the mental health landscape within schools. Public schools in the US have become the conduits for mental health services. In their article, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) analyzes what mental health services looked like
in US schools during the 2021-22 academic year. How mental health services are provided
in schools vary and ranges from in-person mental health services to access through telehealth platforms.
84%
schools reported
offers one on one
counseling
34%
schools reported
offered mental health screenings
70%
schools reported
offers mental health
services coordination
33%
schools reported
disagreed that they
could effectively
provide mental health
services to all students
While 68% of public schools have a licensed mental health professional on staff, the type of work they do varies from short term goals to preventative care and are not necessarily qualified to handle long term care.
Maro has an opportunity to integrate universal mental health screenings in schools to help identify mental health concerns of their students
A competitive analysis shows that competitors are targeting one of these pain points
of mental health supports:
• Many are operating a telehealth model to connect patients with providers
• Others are focusing on providing training and education to counselors and students
• Some are targeting the need for more assessments with online mental health screenings
Maro Schools is unique — they address all 3 barriers schools face when providing
mental health care to their students.
To built the necessary screens, we also needed to understand counselors’current workflow when it comes to mental health. We interviewed school counselors to get their insights and synthesized the research.
“...needing to meet all needs is a constant pressure on our school counselors...”
-Johanna, school counselor
0/6
conduct screenings
on a regular basis
6/6
counselors say they
would benefit from
a streamlined guardian consent process
3/6
counselors make referrals to affiliated clinics
4/6
counselors use google
space to document/share
info with their team
KEY FINDINGS:
• Counselors feel they can’t do the job to the best of their ability because of lack of time and resources
• There’s a lack of standardized screenings
• Guardian consent is on a spectrum
• Referral services vary
CONCEPTUALIZING USER NEEDS
With a foundation of research and user interviews, I movedto journey mapping and user flows to identify opportunities and points of frustrations.
1.
Quickly
finding the
screener rewarding to
counselors
2.
Documenting
plan of action
helpful to
counselors
1.
Long
onboarding
process
2.
Consent a
possible time
deterrent for
counselors
SAVE TIME & BUILT TRUST
Sketching wireframes helped clarify where I can save counselors time by making the screening and referral processes more efficient. But beyond that, counselors also needed a system they can rely on and trust.
CREATING EFFICIENCIES
Counselors feel there’s never enough time to do their jobs. At the core of their struggle is time management. Counselors have created their own method of doing things to meet the demands of their job. For Maro Schools to be successful, counselors need to be trust that the application can help them do their jobs more efficiently.
I got the clients’ buy in to reduce screens and simplify the onboarding process by showing how it saves counselors’ time. In our usabiiity testing, all counselors agreed this sign-up/onboarding process was quick and easy to use.
MULTIPLE SCREENS COMBINED TO ONE FOR QUICKER SIGN UP
SIMPLIFED ONBOARDING PROCESS FOR COUNSELORS
PRIORITIZING TASKS
The counselors’ dashboard was redesigned to help prioritize tasks according to urgency. Messages are color coded to reveal their matter of urgency to counselors and meetings are color coded according to meeting type to help counselors organize their work day. These features were selected based on generative interviews with school counselors.
REDESIGNED COUNSELOR DASHBOARD
CUSTOMIZING KEY TASKS
Counselors recognized the need to administer mental health screenings to a large number of students. This was a key feature that the business wanted to incorporate in the application. We started by organizing by grade level and then giving counselors the flexibility to customize the screening process through a series of filters.
All counselors who tested this feature agreed that screenings page organized by grade was helpful to screen a large number of students.
REDESIGNED SCREENING PAGE ORGANIZED BY GRADE
COUNSELORS CAN THEN APPLY FILTERS
AUTOMATING ROUTINE TASKS
Some of the most time consuming tasks for counselors were routine ones. This was a good opportunity to automate these tasks to free up counselors’ time. We automated guardian consent for screenings and referrals.
The client then requested we test a screen where counselors can email guardians a link to their calendar to set up appointments to discuss concerns with a students’ mental health. Counselors felt this feature was impersonal and would be underutilized with guardians.
AUTOMATED EMAIL TO SET UP APPOINTMENTS WITH COUNSELORS
FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS
My final recommendation to our client is to build trust in the platform by making Maro for counselors the one place for their screening and referral needs. This means balancing customization with automation needs of counselors.
Customization features requested by counselors:
• Consider integrating google workspace with Maro as counselors are using this daily
• Allow counselors to add their own network of professionals under referrals
• Customize screeners in the platform
• Consider adding a notetaking feature
• Reconsider mass referrrals as most counselors interviewed found this impersonal
Some features that the client requested did not test well with counselors. We built out a mass referral feature that did not resonate with counselors. Counselors also said sending out automated calendar invites to guardians without context may go unnoticed by guardians.
Trust is important in the school's mental health ecosystem. We recommend integrating trust in the interactions in Maro Schools so counselors can trust it to do their jobs.