Appearance is important for acceptance in society, and unfortunately, it does not fit into any of the standards of beauty. Very often, acne becomes a cause of insecurity and suffering for its owner.
increased risk of developing depression in the first year
avoid social gathering during acne flares
would feel uncomfortable being seen in public with a person with acne
of patients feel embarrassment and self-consciousness
The impact of acne is just getting to be acknowledged. In 2021, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published their acne treatment guideline, where it advises clinicians to consider referral to mental health services where appropriate.
🤔 The Challenge: How might we help people with acne to feel better?
Skiná is a social media and content creation platform that encourages users to focus on mindfulness and self-acceptance.
The main star of the app is A.I. Skiná, who continuously improves to support users emotionally.
Friendly community to meet and get inspired by resilient people who face common challenge.
Safe place to vent frustrations, be free of judgment for having acne and learn other people’s experience.
I began my research with a general question: “What is it like to have acne?”. I conducted an online research on 4 social media platforms (Instagram, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook) through reading documented experiences of people with acne. I reflected all of my findings in Empathy Map. My main takeaways about those posts are that they contain overwhelmingly negative experiences and most of them were made by women.
👀 Key Insight: If only acne could go away, people's sufferings would be gone as well. However, since it is not yet a well-understood condition there's no ultimate cure. Thus, acne could come back at any point in the future.
💡 Concept Idea: Instead of trying to fix a problem that is beyond one's control, I would like to try to shift an individual's perception to accept oneself even with acne.
I recruited 3 women in their early 20s for user interviews. I defined that my target users are women for two reasons: they suffer from acne more frequently as adults, and are more vulnerable to poor quality of life and low self-esteem due to acne. I was interested in their acne history: how they got acne, challenges they experienced, and what have they tried to attempt to solve their problem. Below are the main insights, organized into 3 themes.
👀 Key Insight: Moderate and severe forms of acne, which cause most visible skin changes, occur relatively rarely. Thus, it might feel that you are the only unlucky person in the world who has it.
💡 Concept Idea: To help people understand that it's not true, my solution needs allow users to freely connect with others and share their experiences.
👀 Key Insight: My target users feel most distressed in the first couple of month when adapting living with acne and need emotional support. Therapy could provide that, but it is unaffordable and not popular among acne patients.
💡 Concept Idea: There's a promising finding that Artificial Intelligence could be used as a cost effective and accessible therapeutic agent.
👀 Key Insight: Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. By practicing mindfulness, one could achieve self-acceptance.
💡 Concept Idea: Journaling is a great way to practice mindfulness as we do not notice our daily thoughts. Users will have virtual diaries and be encouraged to write entries to reflect on them later, helping to achieve self-acceptance in a long run.
