Research
Research Goals
1.
To develop an understanding of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), Post Traumatic Growth (PTG), and the science and philosophy that underlies Boulder Crest’s approach.
2.
To immerse ourselves in the materials and language used by our client, and to also explore similar programs and analogous domains.
3.
Most importantly, to communicate with Boulder Crest staff, alumni, and other veterans to learn first-hand about the unique perspectives and stories of our users.
Research Methods
Secondary Research
- Background Research
- App Solutions
- Analogous Domains
  • Researched PTS, veterans’ organizations and communities.
  • Reviewed current healthcare technologies for PTS, especially ones for veterans.
  • Analyzed of community-based analogous domains.
Boulder Crest Materials
- Struggle Well
- Student Guide
- myPATHH
  • Immersed ourselves with everything Boulder Crest.
  • From book club to read and discuss book Struggle Well written by BCR founder, reviewed BCR material for students, analyzed and evaluate current application.
Survey Responses
- Qualitative Analysis
- Affinity Diagramming
  • Synthesized survey response provided by client from former BCR student about the aftercare program to reveal insights and identify issues.
Interviews
- Semi-Structured Affinity Diagramming
  • Conducted interview with veterans from personal connections to understand the veteran community, and interviewed BCR coaches to learn about the organization.
  • Synthesized interview notes to reveal insights and identify breakdowns.
Insights—First Half of the Semester
Diversity
Students come from a variety of experiences
Community
Students value community as a support system
Continuity, Structure
Students need the structure and support of the retreat to carry over to after care
Transferability
Students need transferable lessons
We saw an opportunity to improve engagement for students during the 18-month follow-up.
Research Through Design
As an exercise of design skills and to test our hypotheses generated in the previous round of research, our team decided to build medium-fidelity prototypes. To maximize our efforts, we split into two sub-teams. This “divide and conquer” strategy would ideally generate a more diverse range of ideas than simply working as a whole team.
“Visualization of progress through the 18-month journey will increase engagement.”

Subteam Alpha wanted to experiment with visualizing progress through myPATHH’s curriculum. Inspired by other applications like Duolingo and Peleton, our designs explored opportunities to reduce visual clutter and evoke a sense of endurance and hope in our users to encourage them to continue with their program.

“Providing a central hub of engagement would increase engagement.”

Subteam Arizona focused on developing a home screen that would centralize the most valuable features across different parts of the application, such as personalized goals, current assignments, and recommended videos. Aspects of these designs were inspired by streaming services like Twitch and YouTube that display large amounts of media in a controlled manner.

Stepping Back

We realized we needed to take a breath and consider: Are we designing the thing right when we really should be designing the right thing? Instead of pushing ahead with our plan to test our assumptions with Boulder Crest students through the parallel prototypes we developed, we needed to first consider if myPATHH needed to serve other purposes beyond its current state. We also needed to better understand the context in which we are designing—so we set off to Boulder Crest.

Retreat Visit
Our team was fortunate enough to spend a weekend in April at our client’s location in Bluemont, Virginia, just as they were kicking off another seven-day Warrior PATHH retreat for veteran Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians.

Our goals for this trip were:

1. To more deeply understand the context in which we are designing and learn from the staff.
2. To build rapport with and get feedback from our client.
3. To bond as a team.

Not only did we achieve our goals, we got an added bonus of tranquility. Even though we were working nonstop, we felt this immense sense of peace on the grounds of Boulder Crest.

After we arrived at Boulder Crest early Friday afternoon, we jumped right in and conducted five back-to-back interviews with Boulder Crest staff. Almost all of the staff whom we interviewed had previously gone through the program themselves, so it was valuable to hear about their own experiences as both participants and staff.

We made a conscious decision with our client not to conduct user research with current program participants because we did not want to intrude on their precious time at the retreat.

We left Boulder Crest with a wealth of data and are excited to synthesize it as a team.

We also had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in various retreat activities. We experienced a surreal bonding moment during a particular retreat tradition: walking the labyrinth. Labyrinths have been used for thousands of years, and their twisting, indirect paths force a slow, meditative journey. At the start of the labyrinth, each of us picked out a stone to carry while walking the path. We walked slowly. We reflected inward. We all paused in the middle, closed our eyes for a moment, and laid our rocks down.

Later, we realized how many heroes had held those same rocks in their hands as they, too, had walked the labyrinth.

Research After the Visit
We conducted speed dating with storyboards to test the needs. These were some of our perceived needs and potential areas of focus for a solution. We aimed to validate the needs based on user feedback. Below are four needs which we validated through speed dating.
Blended Model
Need Reminders for Regular Practice
Progress Tracking
Support in a
Moment of Need

We created multiple storyboards and narrowed them down to the four needs that best captured what we wanted to test. We created three variations of each scenario: minimal change, realistic improvement, and extreme.

These speed dating sessions were valuable. Rather than simply refuting or confirming these assumptions, the reaction was always a bit more complicated. What we got was a more nuanced understanding, which will guide our design process moving forward.

Need Validation
Blended Model of Tech & Real World
  • Boulder Crest creates a community with a unique shared knowledge that can be hard to share with others
  • In-person opportunities to connect are valuable
Need Reminders for Regular Practice
  • Students need a way to stick with their routine
  • Extrinsic rewards could be good only as a means toward marking accomplishments, not as the sole motivator
  • Routine needs to work for individual’s needs
Progress Tracking
  • Recalling memories from the retreat is valuable, especially if they are visual, personal, and specific
  • It’s best to recall your own first-hand subjective experience, keeping respect for the privacy and different interpretations of others
Support in Moment of Need
  • Not needed IF team has a strong relationship with open communication
Insights
Team Dynamics
An open and supportive Fire Team unit helps set up trainees for success, so Boulder Crest should focus on fostering and maintaining this dynamic.
Journey
Boulder Crest’s program takes a long time and goes through several stages, so it is important to both minimize abrupt changes in the level of support and keep a perspective of the larger journey.
Customization
In order to set themselves up for success while struggling well, participants need to pace themselves through the curriculum and find a few key methods that resonate with them.
Content
To minimize stress and increase utility, clear navigation, organization, and searchability is more important than the amount or diversity of information available through myPATHH.
Family
Trainees need to be able to set expectations and share their journey and new perspectives with their everyday support networks, especially their family.
Final Deliverables

The concept of journey is integral to Boulder Crest’s philosophy: as Boulder Crest students chart a path through life, they grow through the ups and downs. Boulder Crest as an organization is also just starting their own journey as they look toward expanding to ten locations over the next few years. To honor the journey of Boulder Crest and its students, we decided to integrate the concept of journey into our final student-defined deliverable. Based on what we learned through research this semester, we created a student journey map overlaying a service blueprint of touchpoints between students and the organization throughout the duration of Warrior PATHH. We will use these deliverables to pinpoint opportunities for improvement via a myPATHH redesign and organizational service design recommendations.

Reflection

During our interviews and calls with Boulder Crest students and staff, we’ve been struck time and time again by the powerful journeys of these inspirational individuals. Telling one’s story is a core tenet of Boulder Crest’s path toward Post-Traumatic Growth, and our users' skill in this area has led to truly insightful conversations. As we’ve progressively come to learn what makes Boulder Crest so valuable and unique, we’ve also come to appreciate the limits of our understanding. We will never be able to fully know what it feels like to live with trauma, to feel lost in hardship, and to repurpose that struggle into a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Learning first-hand from users is a core principle of experience design, but working with Boulder Crest students has made this especially apparent.

Over the course of this eight-month project, our team will have the opportunity to help Boulder Crest better serve the veteran community. We feel truly lucky to be working in such an important and impactful problem space, and excited to explore, evaluate, and improve their tools and program offerings.

Read About Our Design Work
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