Project Concept & Aim
Soft Mind Studio is an interactive service website that provides gentle psychological support. The idea of this project is related to my personal experience: Since entering secondary school, I have frequently found myself in negative emotional states for various reasons. I believe countless others share this experience, as mental health remains a widespread societal need—approximately 17.6% of the global population experiences common mental disorders within a year, while roughly 29.2% are affected by such conditions at some point in their lives (Steel et al., 2014).
With the development of digital technology and the increase in social demand, more and more mental health products are emerging in the form of applications or online platforms. But they often guide users to manage their emotions through scoring, recording, statistics or goals. They seem very rational and effective, but when I use these tools, I often feel a bit pressured: it seems that emotions also need to be managed, optimised, and even “right”. I then start to think: After psychological support is digitised, can we only achieve “care” through quantification, assessment and optimisation of emotions? Is there a form of digital mental support that is neither data-centric nor outcome-driven?
This project precisely started from this sense of discomfort. For me, emotions don’t always need to be “improved”. Sometimes, people just need to be allowed to feel anxious, tired or down. Therefore, I want to create a psychological support space that neither judges the state nor urges the outcome. The goal of this project is not to help users adjust to some ideal state or solve problems, but to provide users with a space where they can stop and breathe slowly through gentle and low-pressure interaction design, feel and coexist with their emotions.
Design & Functionality
The website as a whole adopts a simple structure and a clean colour scheme – there are no long-term data records for rewards or achievements, nor any usage goals. It is composed of only two functional modules. Users can enter and leave at any time. This “demanding nothing” design itself is my response to the logic of mainstream digital products.
Mood Garden
“Mood Garden” is the main functional module of this website. Users record their current feelings by choosing emotions and “planting a flower”. Cladeira et al. (2018, pp.498) mentioned, “…most apps (N = 29) provide mood visualization, such as bar and pie graphs.” However, unlike traditional mood tracking tools, this module has no numerical scores or mood trend graphs.
I choose to use visual elements like hand-drawn floral patterns because I don’t want emotions to look like a piece of data or a task. Flowers are a symbol, reminding us that emotions are natural, which can change and do not need to be corrected immediately. By replacing “recording” with “planting”, emotions are understood as an existence that needs to be treated gently, and users can naturally face negative emotions more calmly through this process.
Breathe Easy
“Breathe Easy” is an auxiliary module of this website, guiding users to breathe naturally through slowly scaling circular particles. The entire process deliberately avoided the highly directive meditation mode commonly found in digital products.
There was no countdown, nor any prompt asking if the user done correctly. Because I hope users can follow their own pace to relieve anxiety or tension, rather than following instructions. In addition, users can choose different white noises as “companions”. These sounds do not have functional directive significance; they merely offer sensory comfort.
Technology & Implementation
From a technical perspective, this project mainly uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript for construction, and combines p5.js to implement simple visual animations to achieve interactive effects. The website mainly focuses on front-end interaction, eliminating the need for login and avoiding complex back-end systems and user data storage.
This technical choice is not merely due to considerations of implementation difficulty, but is closely related to the critical stance of the project. I avoid collecting and analyzing user data because I don’t want emotional experiences to be transformed into content that can be organized, compared or utilized. For me, technology is not merely a tool for achieving functions; it is also an expression of an attitude.
References:
- Caldeira, C., Chen, Y., Chan, L., Pham, V., Chen, Y. and Zheng, K. 2017. Mobile apps for mood tracking: an analysis of features and user reviews. AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings. 2017, pp.495–504. Available from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5977660/.
- Steel, Z., Marnane, C., Iranpour, C., Chey, T., Jackson, J.W., Patel, V. and Silove, D. 2014. The global prevalence of common mental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis 1980–2013. International Journal of Epidemiology. 43(2), pp.476–493. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyu038