Introduction

Every second person has a mental illness at some point in their life. Such mental health issues cause suffering for patients and their loved ones, loss of working hours, and increased healthcare costs. Given the status quo, investing in preventing mental illnesses by raising awareness and promoting mental health is a required starting point. Rod Kommunikation, a marketing leader based in Zurich, took on this challenge with Pro Mente Sana by creating an emotional alphabet and running an awareness campaign.

How might we enable people to talk about their emotions and protect their mental health through an app?

App concept

It was crucial to provide people with more than just awareness about mental health; they needed access to tools, tips & tricks, and offers of support that are close in stressful, demanding, or darker times. headbits was tasked with creating a mobile app concept that added an engagement layer to the awareness campaign.

How are you? Being able to answer this question wholeheartedly and truthfully by being self-aware is the core idea of both the campaign and the app. One would find people from all walks of life who struggle to talk about their emotions and feelings. However, with the rise of social media and the strong adoption among Gen-Z and Millennials, we focussed our concept on the younger demographics. After sketching and designing several ideas, including a last-minute pivot, we adopted a Tinder-style carousel for the emotional alphabet and paired it with a light diary of logged emotions.

The carousel enables the discovery of different emotions as a light engagement layer without forcing users to commit to anything. However, when logging a feeling, the app uses the opportunity to highlight tips, set reminders, add comments, and mention support offers. Therefore the app can help if used as a daily companion or a just-in-case install.

You can learn more, take a self-check, and get the app on the campaign website.