As mention in my previous parts, my audience for this project is the general public as the mental health importance is applicable for all. I want people to understand that mental illness is not a taboo. It is quite common for someone to be mentally ill at any point in time. Instead of silently struggling it is better to seek help and get out of it. I chose a persona named “Adam” who represents a person with Mental Illness. I want to tell the viewers individual suffering from mental illness is not alone.
While there are many ways to tackle mental illness like Medication and Psychotherapy my focus is more towards natural ways of overcoming mental illness. I would like people to eat healthily, perform physical activity, have enough sleep and rest, Practice Yoga/Meditation and maintain social connections. More than curing Mental Illness can help in keeping the individual on a sound mental health.
In my Part I, I primarily focused on the impacts of the COVID-19 on the mental health of Americans. I used Balsamic and hand sketches for putting the idea. I was suggested not to concentrate on COVID but Mental health on a broader sense.
Part II is when I took off, putting my ideas together. I wanted to keep everything digital. I also looked at the datasets where I can get relevant information regarding my project. User feedback was extremely helpful as I got a different perspective on how viewers interpret the visualizations. I was able to quickly course correct where I went wrong. I did all the wireframe and storyboards with Shorthand. I was initially sketching out sections in shorthand on what problem I would like to discuss. I used Unsplash for getting all the pictures for my story. There were very helpful in putting things in place.
In the Initial sections of my project, I wanted to explain to the viewer how mental illness is prevalent and how it affects the individuals and their families. Once I gave the problem context, I wanted the reader to know that there are ways to combat mental illness and improve mental health. I want to let the reader know that there are natural ways to improve mental health. In this story, I have dealt with some of them.
At the end of the story, I have specified call to action in a nutshell so that it can be a good takeaway for the reader. I would like the reader to go with confidence and take care of mental health seriously.
This entire project and wireframes were done with Shorthand and Tableau. I became a big fan of shorthand based on the excellent templates that were available. I concentrated primarily on Tableau charts and Shorthand to make it more appealing. This initial I can get feedback from reviewers in a more detailed way. One of my favourite thing in the project was learning Tableau. I cannot say I am well versed but I developed a liking for showing powerful visualization.