London design studio Special Projects has worked with clinical psychologists to develop SlowMo, a mental health app for people experiencing psychosis that will be trialled by the UK's National Health Service.
Designed to work alongside in-person therapy, the SlowMo app allows users to identify and record unhelpful "fast-thinking" patterns and slow them down through the use of animated bubbles.
The SlowMo app is designed to be used alongside an in-person therapy programme
The programme has been in development for the last five years, led by research clinical psychologist Amy Hardy and her team at King's College London. Special Projects came on board following a controlled trial to hone the user experience, strategy and branding.
Psychotic episodes commonly involve disorganised thoughts, hallucinations or delusions, causing people to see, hear or believe things that are not real. Users can record worrying thoughts in the form of grey bubbles of different sizes
The app's primary function is to help users monitor and recall these unhelpful thoughts, which they can identify and name by creating a grey "worry bubble" that is then scaled to represent how severe the worry feels at the time.
Later, they can discuss these worries with their therapist. But in the moment, the app gives users the opportunity to address them independently, with prompts encouraging them to reframe their view and consider factors that may be causing fast-thinking patterns.
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