Anti-Panic app: Feedback wanted

Hello everyone,

My name is Monique de Vos, and I'm a student at the Technical University of Eindhoven. I'm currently researching a new app against panic- and anxiety attacks as my graduation project at the faculty of Industrial Design. The goal of the project is to provide a free app which helps people calm down from a panic- or anxiety attack sooner, and to train and educate them to better cope with the attacks in the future. It is not meant to replace a therapist, and it never will be; the main purpose of the app is to provide instant relief.

For the actual app to be of real use to people who suffer from panic attacks, I need your feedback. Since you are an expert at battling panic and anxiety in daily life, your feedback would be much appreciated and invaluable for the further development of this app.

I've set up an online prototype of the app using InVision, a well-known prototyping platform for app development. Please copy and paste the link below in your browser bar to access the prototype.
invis.io/Z632DHEND
It will take approximately 5 to 10 minutes to explore the app and write some feedback. Feedback is welcome in any shape or form (in this thread, in a PM, in InVision, positive or negative or just questions; anything you write will help further the development of the app.) Answering the following questions based on your experience with the prototype app would be much appreciated as well:

- Is the 'breathing circle' helpful during a panic attack?
- Is the diary system easy to use?
- What kind of functions should be added to (or removed from) the app to make it more useful?

Thank you in advance for your time and feedback!

Kind regards,
Monique

The design has been updated with some expanded functionality to further clarify the aim of the app.
An added explorable feature is the counterthoughts system (which contains cognitive therapy elements). You can find the new system under Training > Mental excercises > Counter-thoughts.

The prototype has been constructed using InVision, a well-known and popular app prototyping platform. To access the prototype, please copy the following link into your browser bar. This will take you directly to the prototype.
invis.io/ZK34KJA9W

Any feedback is appreciated, be it positive, negative, constructive, or just questions. Feedback can be left in the comments, in a PM, or in InVision itself.
Examples of questions which would greatly help the development include:

- Is the 'breathing circle' helpful during a panic attack?
- Does the counterthought system add value to the app?
- What kind of functions should be added to (or removed from) the app to make it more useful?

Thank you (again) for your time!

Hi Monique,

I had a look at this last night out of interest and to get you some comments which will hopefully start others thinking about reviewing it too.

The breathing circle is useful as it adds a visual prompt and removes the need for counting. I think it is also useful in another way, as something to focus on. Intense focussing is another distraction technique and I have found it was working for me and I even used it to get past my panic when I was eating by intensely focussing on the TV power button. After a couple of weeks of this, my eating panic dissipated.

So, watching the circle may help that way or if nothing else it gives you something to look at whilst panicking which removes the other possible visual stimilus you could receive.

I would say think about visual distraction though, there will be articles around about it as I found it off one of the anxiety techniques websites about 6 years ago.

The breathing circle would be useful if used in other breathing techniques you plan on adding. I noticed that was still under construction though.

The counterthought system is useful. This one is a matter of how the user makes it useful though, hence a few examples will be very useful to them. You are getting slightly into Thought Records with this and one of the problems can be that the user can't think of anything or can't see outside of their situation. So, it might be appropriate to have a far few examples, even online maybe that the tool can bring up? Prompting the person to come up with the right counterthought is the issue here but I think its a value-added function.

Since you are using written cues, please have a look at Davit's "Words" thread on the Panic board. This is because you need to ensure you are using positive words in your app, especially the counterthought system. The same applies to the user though or they are not getting the true value of their countering so I would suggest again something to add to this system that tells the user to use positive words otherwise they are training themselves to beat something by using a negative and thats only going to be partially helpful.

It seems a load morew will be added so there isn't much to review right now so I'll leave it there, since some of the navigation functions will improve it when switched on, other than to say I couldn't get the music on it for some reason and I don't really like the pointer tool as its not very clear when hovering or clicking with it being a ball.

I'm not sure what else could be added beyond the above as those were my main thoughts. I'm sure there are loads and I could bang on about Mindfulness but you would do better viewing the competition on that one. Hopefully some more people will have a look and give you some feedback.

Good luck with it!

Hi Terry,

Thank you for your feedback, it's very useful. I'll definately look into Davit's 'Words' thread, you make a very important point there! The visual distraction is also much worth checking out.

I should probably add that the app is (primarily) meant to be used in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy, as both the thought diary and the counterthoughts are parts of this kind of therapy (often used as homework) and are able to add to the process.
Unfortunately, the abscence of the music and the pointer tool are limitations of the prototyping platform itself. I'll look into other prototyping platforms, as actually adding music to the prototype and removing 'friction' while navigating might help experience the prototype better.