Strengths and Challenges - Thryvia
Designing a collaborative reflection exercise for bipolar care
Strengths and Challenges
A collaborative exercise that helps people with bipolar disorder and their supporters identify strengths, prioritize challenges, and personalize care.
Overview
People living with bipolar disorder often experience cycles of mood changes that can affect sleep, motivation, decision-making, and daily functioning. Support from family members or trusted supporters can be extremely valuable, but many dyads struggle to clearly communicate about what helps, what gets in the way, and where support should focus.
I designed a guided in-app exercise that helps a person with bipolar disorder and their supporter identify personal strengths, surface meaningful challenges, and create a shared list that drives personalized support throughout the app.
The resulting artifact becomes a foundation for tailoring future activities, recommendations, and therapeutic tools.
This case study is a portfolio-safe adaptation of a real mental health product protected by an NDA.
The flow has been reframed for bipolar disorder, and all branding and proprietary details have been removed or altered. The design process and interaction patterns reflect the real project, while research insights and outcomes are realistic equivalents based on bipolar mental health literature and digital health best practices.
UX Architecture Diagram
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My Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
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Synthesizing clinical research and psychological insights
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Defining the experience architecture
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Designing the full interaction flow
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Creating wireframes and prototypes
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Collaborating with clinicians, engineering, and leadership
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Preparing the experience for development
Team
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CEO / Product Lead
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Clinical psychologists
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Engineering team
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Additional UX designers
Tools
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Figma
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FigJam
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Journey mapping
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Interaction flow modeling
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Collaborative design workshops
Problem
Individuals with bipolar disorder and their supporters often notice different patterns, making it difficult to align on what support is most needed.
People living with bipolar disorder may focus on internal experiences such as mood changes, motivation, or emotional intensity. Supporters, on the other hand, may notice external behaviors like sleep disruption, impulsive decisions, or withdrawal.
Without a shared understanding of these experiences, it can be difficult for digital tools, or even relationships, to provide effective support.
The challenge was to design an activity that could help both participants reflect on strengths and challenges, align their perspectives, and produce meaningful information that could personalize the rest of the app.
Solution
I designed a guided reflection flow that helps users identify strengths, prioritize challenges, and merge perspectives into a shared list.
The experience guides users through a short sequence of steps designed to be simple and supportive.
First, the individual selects personal strengths that reflect positive qualities and resources in their life. Next, they identify challenges that affect their well-being and prioritize which ones have the greatest impact.
After completing the exercise, a supporter is invited to complete the same activity. The system then reveals both perspectives and merges them into a shared list that becomes a reference point for future support.
Annotated Screenshots (6 screens)
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Design Principles
Designing mental health tools requires balancing emotional safety, clarity, and meaningful personalization. Several principles guided the design of this experience:
Start with strengths
Beginning with positive qualities creates a supportive tone and helps users engage with the exercise before reflecting on challenges.
Keep interactions lightweight
Short steps and simple selection interactions make the activity easier to complete during fluctuating mood or energy levels.
Support multiple perspectives
Allowing supporters to contribute their view provides a fuller picture of the individual’s experience.
Turn reflection into actionable data
Capturing strengths and challenges as structured information allows the product to personalize recommendations across the app.
Impact
This feature helps individuals and supporters align on what matters most while enabling more personalized mental health support.
By transforming personal reflections into structured information, the exercise provides a foundation for tailoring activities, tools, and recommendations to each user’s situation.
If implemented in production, success would be evaluated through several indicators:
completion rate of the reflection activity
supporter participation in the exercise
alignment between user and supporter priorities
engagement with personalized recommendations
perceived usefulness of the activity
Together, these indicators would help determine whether the feature improves personalization, engagement, and collaborative support within the product.
What I Learned
Designing collaborative mental health experiences requires balancing emotional sensitivity, usability, and meaningful outcomes.
This project reinforced several lessons that continue to shape my design approach.
Leading with strengths can increase participation and reduce resistance when discussing difficult topics. Simple interaction patterns help users complete reflective activities even during periods of low energy or motivation.
Including supporter perspectives can reveal insights that individuals may not identify on their own, creating opportunities for more effective collaboration.
Finally, structured reflection can become a powerful foundation for personalization when it is thoughtfully integrated into the broader product experience.