LePal.ai
A Gen Z focused mental health app offering personalized support through self-guided tools and experiences through AI
Roles:
UX Design Lead Intern
UX Researcher InternTimeline:
September 2024 - December 2024UI/Visual Design
Usability Testing
Wireframing & Prototyping
Interaction Design
User ResearchResponsibilities:
Background
Setting the Stage
Mental health is a growing concern among college students as they face academic pressure, social challenges, and personal growth. LePal.ai is an app that offers a Gen Z-focused mental health and lifestyle app with personalized, self-guided tools—like journaling, AI therapy chats, and digital companions—to support emotional well-being in a fast-paced, digital world.
As part of my internship at LePal.ai, I explored how design can better support emotional health and self-reflection through digital interaction. My work focused on improving the app’s user experience and overall usability to ensure that users feel supported and understood in every step of their mental health journey. I also worked to enhance the current platform by designing a space for social interaction between peers, encouraging community-driven support, and creating payment screens for users looking to take the next step forward in their mental health journey.
The Process
1
Initial Insights
User interviews
Usability Testing
User PersonaResearch
2
3
Friends Page
Ideation
Low Fidelity
High Fidelity4
Payment Designs
Ideation
Low Fidelity
High Fidelity
Final PrototypeReflection
User Feedback
Next StepsResearch
Initial Insights
To begin my internship at LePal.ai, I immersed myself in the platform as a first-time user, approaching the app with a UX research mindset. Over the course of a week, I engaged with the app’s core features for 30 minutes each night, documenting my observations and impressions to better understand its current strengths and usability gaps. This hands-on exploration helped me evaluate how intuitive the experience was for new users while also revealing opportunities to enhance user engagement, emotional support, and interaction design.
Through this process, I identified eight key features:
Each of these features contributed to LePal’s goal of creating a personalized and emotionally supportive experience. Tools like Therapy Planet and journals encouraged users to reflect on their mental well-being through guided conversations and open-ended prompts, fostering a sense of emotional safety. On the other hand, the item store and pet interactions added a layer of playfulness and visual customization, helping users form a stronger emotional connection with the app. However, through my hands-on evaluation, I noticed several opportunities for improvement — including unclear navigation paths, inconsistent feature visibility, and a lack of meaningful peer-to-peer interaction. These gaps informed the focus of my work: designing more intuitive experiences and creating new spaces for social connection, allowing users to support one another while continuing their personal wellness journeys.
Understanding our Users:
Research
To understand Gen Z users and their mental health needs, I defined a target audience of individuals aged 14–25 who are digitally active, open to discussing mental health, and familiar with gamified experiences. My recruitment strategy focused on both inner-circle connections (friends and family) and outreach to a wider audience through Discord communities, social media platforms, and my university’s Slack channels.
Wanting to see how Gen Z users engage with LePal, I conducted three semi-structured interviews after participants used the app over a 5–10 day period. Exploring user behaviors, motivations, pain points, and expectations in depth found the app’s value as a safe emotional outlet, strong visual appeal, and the importance of features like Therapy Planet and AI pet interactions. Users appreciated reflective tools like session summaries but highlighted issues with customization limits and conversational flow.
To evaluate the overall usability of the app, I conducted moderated remote usability tests with four participants, focusing on core features such as Therapy Planet, journaling, AI interactions, the mood tracker, and report history. Participants shared their screens on Zoom while completing structured tasks and verbalizing their thoughts, allowing me to take detailed observational notes using Miro. This process revealed valuable insights into navigation issues, unclear button functions, and underdeveloped social and reflective features. The study highlighted key areas for improvement—particularly in AI conversational flow and report visibility—while also reinforcing which features resonated with users emotionally and visually.
Usability Testing:
Research
Original Friends View
User Personas:
Research
I crafted a user persona to help to visualize the ideal user who would benefit the most from Lepal’s service. This process provided an approach that focused on the goals, needs, and frustrations of a digitally connected college student seeking accessible and personalized mental health support
I crafted a user persona to help to visualize the ideal user who would benefit the most from Lepal’s service. This process provided an approach that focused on the goals, needs, and frustrations of a digitally connected college student seeking accessible and personalized mental health support
User Journey:
Research
Ideation - Designing a Solution:
Friends Page
After the individual research phase concluded, I was tasked with guiding our newly formed team as the UX Lead through the design process. Given we had never worked together before, we faced misalignment in communication and direction in our first project of redesigning the friends page, which made it difficult to establish a clear design vision early on.
Friends Page
Understanding our Problem Space
Before diving into design, we wanted to better understand the current functionality of the Friends page, which was limited and minimal in features. Our goal was to identify what was already offered and where it fell short in supporting user interaction. This helped us ground our design decisions in what users actually needed.
Friends Page
Friends Page
High-Fidelity Prototype
Lo-fi & Mid-fi Prototypes
Mid-fi Design Friends PageWith feedback from our stakeholders and potential users, our team moved forward with enhancing our mid-fi to a more polished version of the friends page layout. Emphasizing the design’s need to improve usability, we shifted our final design to be more inclusive while capturing the charisma that LePal conveyed throughout the app.
After identifying where the friends page fell short of meeting user needs, we turned to our research to guide us in the next steps. Our team developed lo/mid-fidelities to improve clarity, usability, and engagement. These ideas laid the foundation for our design direction moving forward in our high fidelity.
High Fidelity Prototype