Welcome to Lexa.

Welcome to Lexa.

Sasha Mitchell.

Lexa.

Introduction. 4 Overview. 5 Value Proposition. 6 Market Research. 7 Application Design. 8 Flow Diagram. 10 Students Registration Questionnaire. 11 ‘Talk To Lexa’. 13 Teachers & TA’s. 14

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Lexa.

Family Members. 14 School Councillors. 14 Foreseeable Measures. 16 Events. 17

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Lexa.

Introduction.

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An interactive application for iOS & Android devices to be used by students in secondary schools, their teachers, and their family members to allow school councillors to identify which students are at a higher risk of having a mental health crisis.

Lexa.

Overview.

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Tracking pupils mood, health, grades, and behaviour, the application generates an overall summary of the students risk for mental health issues to arise. Each student using the application will have a colour generated for them from the data it receives; Green, Amber, or Red. This colour indicates to the school and family how much of a risk they are to have a mental health crisis. This takes away the need to share private information between any party.

Students at the highest risk must attend short sessions with a counselor who does have access to the data for the safety of the children. The correlation of triggers of students mood and behaviour can be highlighted to school counselors. These triggers can then be discussed.

The schools can then hold mandatory classes and events for the students in the Red. These can be workshops, activities, or trips outside of school time to give these students time to relax and have fun.

Lexa.

Value Proposition.

There are currently not enough counselors in schools to provide each student personal support. Lexa allows the students that are at the highest risk to be prioritised, and if necessary filtering students that need to be seen by local support services urgently.

We cannot rely on teachers to watch every student closely in case they miss something. They have to support each child’s education and they cannot be expected to also have a close enough relationship to each student to know if they need extra support.

Many students keep how they are feeling to themselves.

They do not want to tell their family or their teachers. A non judgmental character that is there to simply ask a couple questions may be easier to open up to, rather than someone that they have to face everyday.

With half of all mental health problems being established before the age of 14, secondary school is the most crucial time to identify any underlying crisis a student might be facing. There is not enough support for schools to successfully care for every individual pupil carefully. Doing so without a support system such as Lexa, there would be a need for many more staff to talk to each student individually, possibly on a weekly basis, which still might not be enough.

This would take a large portion of school funding away from other areas that need it, such as supplies, free school lunches, and activities.

This would also take a lot of time, requiring students to take time away from their classes to talk to a counselor or teacher, when it may not be necessary.

Students that have mental illnesses or in a situation that might cause a mental health crisis can be flagged by

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Lexa, even identifying students you might have a crisis if not noticed. Schools are then able to proceed with this information as they feel is necessary. It is recommended that the highest risk students are to be seen by a counselor for short sessions as soon as possible, and run activities and events to give these children some time to relax.

Currently schools can only help students when the staff is made aware of any struggles they are facing. This can only be done when the students or their family members get in contact. Students can find it very intimidating and scary to ask for help, and if their family is part of the problem, the school may not find out about any issues at home from them.

This system at the moment you may miss the opportunity to help a student from a crisis before it is too late, especially quiet students that do not want to speak out.

There are a number of applications on the market at the moment to help track your mood, your behaviour and your health. Lexa is inspired by these tools of self care, it has taken these methods of mood tracking and applied it to aid this growing issue of mental health in young people.

Lexa.

Market Research.

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Happify.

Reflectly.

This application is a tool that lets you track what in your life is making you happy, what’s bringing you down. You can score out of 5 how you are feeling and what is causing that. You can then, (if you have a subscription), track your mood through the week and months, and even see what common denominators there are.

This tool is a tracker and meditation application. Continually pushing for a happy mood, this tool urges you to think of the 3 things you’re grateful for today, what 3 things are you proud of yourself for. Simple questions that urge positivity. There are also small tasks and games that provide a meditative atmosphere and clears your mind. There are also a number of calming podcasts to listen to when you are stressed.

Headspace.

This tool works as a quiet space, for the audience to come and listen to relaxing meditative tracks and podcasts. With gentle animation and interface, it reads positive messages in an innocent and unintimidating way.

Lexa.

Application Design.

Lexa

The name, Lexa, was chosen as not only does it mean ‘defender of mankind’, it is short, easy to remember, and is unisex. I wanted to make a concious decision that the application is genderless. I did not want any student to be uncomfortable using the applications character because of its gender.

I have designed a variety of moods for Lexa, so they can react to the data that they are receiving. Starting of happy, but if they are upset, angry, unwell, excited, having fun, Lexa can interactively respond to the children.

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Lexa.

Application Design.

This is Lexa’s interface design. With a soft gradient background and an emoticon to represent Lexa’s character. The typeface I have chosen is soft and light san-serif Titillium Web. This soothing typeface helps set the relaxing and non-judgmental tone of the applications theme. The colour of Lexa can be changed by the user’s whenever they feel like it in the settings menu. This allows the students to become more attached to the application as they have personalised it to how they want.

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Lexa.

Flow Diagram.

Students

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Teachers/TA’s

Family

Mood

Health

Grade

Behaviour

Situation

Behaviour

Morning mood, plus extra ‘talk to me’ summaries

A healthy amount of sleep and eating all meals

Changes in grade from the student norm for the worse

Changes in behaviour, whether that acting out or being quiet

Change in family set up or routine that need to be mentioned

Changes in behaviour, whether that acting out or being quiet

1 - Terrible 5 - Wonderful

1 - Terrible 5 - Wonderful

1 - Extremely Irregular 5 - Normal

1 - Extremely Irregular 5 - Normal

1 - Extremely Irregular 5 - Normal

1 - Extremely Irregular 5 - Normal

Bellow13 RED

14 - 20 AMBER

Between 21 - 30 GREEN

Refered to extra activities & events if necessary

Irratic situation Medium risk for mental health crisis

Shifting situation Medium risk for mental health crisis

Stable situation Low risk for mental health crisis

Councillors can view information from all parties

Councilling session booked ASAP

Teachers and family are made aware to be vigilant

Refered to local support services if necessary

Teachers and family are made aware to be vigilant

The flow of the application allows for all parties with the interest of the students mental safety in mind to participate to help students, without breaching any data protection regulations. The application takes information from the students themselves, teachers and TA’s, and the students family members. They can all input data shown in the diagram, and this information is calculated from 1 to 5. The scores are tallied up by the application and the colour is given depending on the information received.

Lexa.

Student Registration Questionnaire.

Lexa can only track students if data is put into the system. To encourage each student to put in the information, it asks very short and concise questions that should not take longer than 2 minutes. Lexa recommends the schools to urge students to answer these questions during the morning registration. Form time is a requirement for all schools so this time can easily be used for the students.

Lexa initially asks ‘how was your day yesterday?’ to evaluate the students mood on the school and home life overall. At this point they can respond from 1 to 5, with 1 being terrible, and 5 being wonderful; this data goes towards the child’s colour. They are then asked what the reason was for that response. They are given a number of options, such as health, school, friends, homework, family, relationships, activities, or other. After selecting one that can go into more detail if they feel they want to. This information is then kept on record in case they have a counselling appointment, where this data can be analysed and discussed.

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Lexa.

Student Registration Questionnaire.

The students are then asked about their health by raising two important topics, their sleep and their diet. This can be developed more with research, but for now the data is taken from the hours of sleep they are getting and the amount of meals they are having every day. The more the data varies from the suggested 3 meals a day and 8 hours sleep, the lower the score gets for that section of the students total.

These quick questions are not detailed enough to find out the cause of problems, but are enough to highlight students who aren’t doing well to the people around them.

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Lexa.

‘Talk to Lexa’.

‘Talk to me’ is a section in the application where the students can come back to Lexa through the day and evening to input more data on their mood if they feel it is necessary. All of the scores through the day are recognised and are considered in the data analysis.

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Lexa.

Teachers & TA’s.

Family Members.

Teachers and teaching assistants are vital to the children’s safety as they see the students every week day. They can see a change in behaviour easily, whether that is the bad behaviour or unusually quiet behaviour. There may also be a change in attitude towards the class or their friends. This behavioural change can be inputted into the application similarly to the students after selecting the students profile.

Family members can download the application to keep an eye on their children’s overall score. They are then able to put data in themselves to allow the school a better idea of what their home life is like. The can score from 1 to 5, how irregular their home life is at the moment. Whether there has been lots of changes, a family disturbance such as a death, an argument, moving house, anything that might cause stress to their child.

They can also add any dramatic changes in grades or participation with the education. If there is a lack of homework being handed in, or if they have a drop in test results, this data can be added into the child’s profile.

School Councillors.

They can also score the child’s change in behaviour.

Whether they have been acting the same as usual, or if they are being quiet or acting out.

From all of this information the students are then automatically given a colour reflecting their overall score.

Green for doing good, amber means they need to be kept and eye on, and red means they need support. School Councillors can then step in at this point. They have access to all the student information with the students with the lowest scores highlighted to them. The students that are in the red section need to be seeing a councillor once a week, whether its a 10 to 60-minute session. This time can depend on how many students are in the red and how stretched the councillors, or it could be how long the student needs to be seen, defending on their mental stability.

The school counsilors are the only people can see the information being put into the childrens file, this can be discussed with the student during the sessions. Head of years and school principle are made aware of the most vulnerable students. Any students that are actually in danger can be highlighted straight away and be referred to the local support services. This allows Local Support Services to deal with the areas most crucial cases. Filtering only the children that are in need of serious help.

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Lexa.

School Councillors.

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Lexa.

Foreseeable Measures.

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Falsifying information.

Funding.

Students may falsify information, such as their mood and health, so they can be invited to extra classes or activities.

These mandatory invitations can only be given by counselors that have assessed the students. If the student does not visit the counselor, or if they do and they see no real underlying concern, they do not get any invitation to these events.

This service should be part funded by the government, with a small portion of the schools funding going towards this software and partly by the parents, with the percentage of costs they have to pay for the students device goes towards the applications system.

Lack of data.

Measuring Success.

What if data is not given? If teachers do not notice a change in behaviour or there is not a dramatic change in grade they may not input any data as they can get busy with other tasks. Family members may also neglect to input any data if there is no change in behaviour or situation. In the case there is no data being inputted into Lexa the students will receive full marks; as this probably means there were no changes.

Lexa can begin to roll out in 10 schools around the UK where they believe there needs to be a change or an aid for the current methods in place targeting the increase of mental health issues in young people. They must not all be in places of extreme circumstances, (such as extreme high levels in crisis). The data needs to be fair and proportionate.

However, students must input data. They will have notifications to remind them at the correct time in the morning, as well as teachers encouraging the use of the application. If no data if put in by the end of the school day (3/3:30pm), they will receive the lowest score of 1, as it is presumed that something is wrong.

Students and their families will benefit from this app, so all parties must review the applications system and the results it gives. Schools using this app are predicted to be providing better care, as the application allows them to use their resources better. This measure must be analysed also, whether the schools counselors are finding the system to be highlighting the children that need the service accurately or not.

Lexa.

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Events.

Lexa has one sole job, and that is to highlight the students that are most likely to have a mental health crisis. It is what the school, families and students do with that information that counts. The Lexa community encourages and inspires a number of events, activities, and workshops on the back of the information that Lexa provides.

The schools are provided with digital activity packs that they can download and print to inspire if the schools are at a loss for ideas. Activities can include art classes to physical sport classes. Events can range from team building exercises to orienteering trips to get out and get some fresh air. Workshops may range from meditation and mindfulness, to building coping mechanisms. All of these things are heavily suggested, but not required.

Welcome to Lexa.

Sasha Mitchell.