How do you know good design when you see it? And what is good design when it comes to a mental health app? In part, it’s about getting the right balance between autonomy and guidance, says Kim Goodwin, Woebot Health’s newly-appointed VP of User Experience and the author of Designing for the Digital Age. We’re talking to Kim about the human-centered design principles that guide her thinking, and how she’ll help evolve Woebot’s user experience to boost clinical outcomes and advance relational agents for mental health. 

Ok, we have to ask this first: What are some of your favorite products because of the way they’re designed?

There are products I love just for how they look and feel, like the Eames Lounge Chair. Then there are products I love for their convenience. The fact that my bank lets me scan a paper check which, strangely, people still send me sometimes, is super convenient. I also like things  that are unexpectedly good. I was staying in a hotel once that had a little shelf next to the hotel room door for setting your coffee while you fish out your room key. I love those little design touches that tell me someone really paid attention. They didn’t just design something functional. They designed something that feels good to use.

Tell us a bit about your job and your focus. 

I’m VP of User Experience, which basically means my team is responsible for making sure that Woebot is the best it can be as far as the user’s concerned. We’re all about making sure that we marry clinical effectiveness with a great experience and that we’re covering all the touch points of the app: its content, behavior, and look and feel.

You’ve probably looked at a lot of apps in the mental health space. What are some of Woebot’s unique design attributes?

There are thousands of new mental health apps and chatbots out there. What’s unique about Woebot is how smart and human it is. It’s truly a relational agent in the sense that it creates a bond with people and engages them to work on their mental health. It mirrors human behavior like remembering past conversations and the things you care about. It’s self-deprecating and acknowledges its own imperfections. And it helps people recognize that their experience isn’t unique. If others are going through the same thing, you can get through it, too.

We’ve been through a lot, lately, haven’t we?!

The team did a great job responding to COVID, recognizing that everybody was going to be stuck at home and mental health was going to be taking a nose dive. My hope is that as things evolve, we’re able to continue to make Woebot responsive not just to what’s going on for the individual, but for the world around us as well. 

How else do you want to improve Woebot? 

We know the bond that people form with Woebot is therapeutically important, because we know when you work with a therapist—or talk to a friend for that matter—knowing that they’re on your side, that you’re in good hands, is really important to your ability to make progress. So we’ll continue to deepen that capability. But we’ll also expand Woebot’s scope. We want to make sure that Woebot continues to be adaptable to how you’re doing and what’s going on in life right now, and that it’s a great place to keep track of your history and the things that have influenced your mental health over time. 

So, a kind of lifelong companion?

Exactly. Some people use Woebot that way today, but we want to continue to evolve Woebot as a kind of coach for all of life’s ups and downs.

What are some of the core design principles you’ll bring to Woebot Health?

There’s actually a very interesting parallel between great product design and therapy. One of the things we try to do in product design is balance the idea of user autonomy with user success. So we try to make sure that if you want to customize your experience in some way that matters to you, you can do that, but that you can also succeed without making a lot of decisions if you don’t want to. Therapy is about taking control of your life and your emotions, but having expert guidance in doing so. That’s why you’re always in charge when you’re talking with Woebot, you always get to decide to opt-in or opt-out, but Woebot also has suggestions. So, when you’re stuck and you don’t know what to do, you don’t have to figure that out, because Woebot is there with an idea and a plan. Therapy and design in this sense can come together and complement each other remarkably well.

Whoa, that’s deep. Say more about that. 

Let’s say you install a new piece of software and it gives you a blank canvas, and it’s got all these toolbars and stuff and you’re like, okay, what do I do? In a productivity tool, you might get a useful template that’s partly populated to show you how to use it. But we have to be smart about how we do that, because otherwise you get Clippy in Microsoft Word, which, nobody loved because its suggestions were usually wrong. Worse than that are programs that are designed to get you to do something that the company wants. Honestly, that’s the thing that most people in my field hate, because we’re often asked to convince people to click that buy button or look at more ads. Woebot isn’t going to try to persuade you to do something. It’s going to help you make a decision, but it’s your choice. So there’s a ton of overlap between the aims of good therapy and good user experience. 

You’ve had a pretty storied career. You’re also an author! Tell us about your book, Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. First, what is human-centered design?

Put simply, it’s about making somebody’s life better without making other people’s lives worse. Everything we do must be focused on how we help users improve without doing any harm. We don’t want someone to feel excluded based on how we say something or the examples we use. But it’s not just superficial. It’s also about keeping you and your data safe. Human-centered design is about putting those user needs first, always. 

Why did you write it?

There was nothing out there that was a soup to nuts guide from getting a deep understanding of your users all the way through to how you execute that in a product. I wanted to fill that gap. But I also love to teach, to help people grow their skills and get better. I felt I could have a bigger impact in the world by teaching a lot of other people about design and user research. 

That’s the hallmark of a good manager. Which leads to another question: what kind of team are you building?

Organizations that do really great human centered design understand that you can’t design a great experience without a diverse and human centered team. So I’m looking for people with deeply human centered values and a real diversity of skill sets and life experiences, so that the Woebot team looks like the world we’re here to serve. We’re not just looking for clinical skillsets and writing and visual design and research skills. We’re also looking for people who can bring a lot of different perspectives to make sure that Woebot’s voice feels good to everybody. (Plug: check out some of the roles open in Kim’s group here.)