Soluna: Designing Safer Ways for Youth to Connect
A youth-centered community experience within Soluna, a mobile mental health app for California youth, designed to make peer support feel approachable, familiar and rooted in shared experience.
ROLE
Interaction Design @ IDEO
CLIENT
Soluna by Kooth
CONTRIBUTIONS
Led the end-to-end interaction design of Soluna’s Community feature experience, translating youth co-design research into intuitive social and discussion patterns. Designed user flows and interfaces and partnered with engineers to bring the feature toward implementation for beta launch.
PROJECT TYPE & TIMELINE
Digital Product Design – 2-month engagement, 2023
Soluna: Designing Safer Ways for Youth to Connect
A youth-centered community experience within Soluna, a mobile mental health app for California youth, designed to make peer support feel approachable, familiar and rooted in shared experience.
ROLE
Interaction Design @ IDEO
CLIENT
Soluna by Kooth
CONTRIBUTIONS
Led the end-to-end interaction design of Soluna’s Community feature experience, translating youth co-design research into intuitive social and discussion patterns. Designed user flows and interfaces and partnered with engineers to bring the feature toward implementation for beta launch.
PROJECT TYPE & TIMELINE
Digital Product Design – 2-month engagement, 2023
Soluna: Designing Safer Ways for Youth to Connect
A youth-centered community experience within Soluna, a mobile mental health app for California youth, designed to make peer support feel approachable, familiar and rooted in shared experience.
ROLE
Interaction Design @ IDEO
CLIENT
Soluna by Kooth
CONTRIBUTIONS
Led the end-to-end interaction design of Soluna’s Community feature experience, translating youth co-design research into intuitive social and discussion patterns. Designed user flows and interfaces and partnered with engineers to bring the feature toward implementation for beta launch.
PROJECT TYPE & TIMELINE
Digital Product Design – 2-month engagement, 2023
Young people in the U.S. are facing a growing mental health crisis.
284K+
California youth cope with major depression.
66%
of kids with depression don’t receive treatment.
In response, Kooth partnered with IDEO to co-design Soluna with young people in California, ages 13–25, ultimately securing a $188M, four-year contract with California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to bring the platform to scale.
How could we preserve what young people wanted while making practical decisions about what we could deliver?
Before I joined, the team had spent nine months co-designing with young people to understand their needs and exploring what their ideal mental health platform might look like. That work established the initial concept and the features they wanted, including a community space to connect with peers.
Learning from the digital spaces young people already exist in
To understand what Community could become, I paired our existing youth co-design research with an analysis of the digital spaces young people already knew how to navigate.
Synthesis session after having co-design sessions with youth to determine what exactly they're hoping for in an app.
A market analysis of how social platforms invite people to share, respond and connect within communities.
Key insights from user research that shaped my designs
I translated our user research into a set of familiar interaction patterns, giving young people simple ways to discover conversations, share what they’re going through and support others.
Suggested topics help young people filter through conversations that reflect what they’re navigating, then explore peer perspectives at their own pace.
Moderated and anonymized posts allow for Kooth staff to ensure the in-app community is safe and promotes overall wellbeing and connection between users.
Users have agency to bookmark posts they'd like to return to or hide posts that might negatively impact them or their mental health.
“I feel less alone and am able to focus more inside and out of school, knowing I can get the help I need, and want.” — Soluna User
From concept to a statewide mental health platform.
I delivered Soluna’s Community experience through final interaction design and engineering handoff, bringing youth-centered peer connection into the launched product.
Across the broader platform, Soluna reported 160,000 registered young people in California in its 2024–25 data. User feedback showed 87% accessed the mental health support they wanted, while 49% reported they would otherwise lack access to services. An independent Northwestern University evaluation found reduced distress and improved wellbeing after one month, with gains sustained at three months.
Source: Soluna Impact
TOOLS
Figma, Figjam
FOCUS AREAS
Interaction design, youth-centered design, social support, digital health product design, competitive analysis, user research synthesis, stakeholder collaboration
TEAM
Cross-disciplinary IDEO team, including three interaction designers, one UX researcher, one data scientist
Young people in the U.S. are facing a growing mental health crisis.
284K+
California youth cope with major depression.
66%
of kids with depression don’t receive treatment.
In response, Kooth partnered with IDEO to co-design Soluna with young people in California, ages 13–25, ultimately securing a $188M, four-year contract with California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to bring the platform to scale.
How could we preserve what young people wanted while making practical decisions about what we could deliver?
Before I joined, the team had spent nine months co-designing with young people to understand their needs and exploring what their ideal mental health platform might look like. That work established the initial concept and the features they wanted, including a community space to connect with peers.
Learning from the digital spaces young people already exist in
To understand what Community could become, I paired our existing youth co-design research with an analysis of the digital spaces young people already knew how to navigate.
Synthesis session after having co-design sessions with youth to determine what exactly they're hoping for in an app.
A market analysis of how social platforms invite people to share, respond and connect within communities.
Key insights from user research that shaped my designs
I translated our user research into a set of familiar interaction patterns, giving young people simple ways to discover conversations, share what they’re going through and support others.
Suggested topics help young people filter through conversations that reflect what they’re navigating, then explore peer perspectives at their own pace.
Moderated and anonymized posts allow for Kooth staff to ensure the in-app community is safe and promotes overall wellbeing and connection between users.
Users have agency to bookmark posts they'd like to return to or hide posts that might negatively impact them or their mental health.
“I feel less alone and am able to focus more inside and out of school, knowing I can get the help I need, and want.” — Soluna User
From concept to a statewide mental health platform.
I delivered Soluna’s Community experience through final interaction design and engineering handoff, bringing youth-centered peer connection into the launched product.
Across the broader platform, Soluna reported 160,000 registered young people in California in its 2024–25 data. User feedback showed 87% accessed the mental health support they wanted, while 49% reported they would otherwise lack access to services. An independent Northwestern University evaluation found reduced distress and improved wellbeing after one month, with gains sustained at three months.
Source: Soluna Impact
TOOLS
Figma, Figjam
FOCUS AREAS
Interaction design, youth-centered design, social support, digital health product design, competitive analysis, user research synthesis, stakeholder collaboration
TEAM
Cross-disciplinary IDEO team, including three interaction designers, one UX researcher, one data scientist
Young people in the U.S. are facing a growing mental health crisis.
284K+
California youth cope with major depression.
66%
of kids with depression don’t receive treatment.
In response, Kooth partnered with IDEO to co-design Soluna with young people in California, ages 13–25, ultimately securing a $188M, four-year contract with California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to bring the platform to scale.
How could we preserve what young people wanted while making practical decisions about what we could deliver?
Before I joined, the team had spent nine months co-designing with young people to understand their needs and exploring what their ideal mental health platform might look like. That work established the initial concept and the features they wanted, including a community space to connect with peers.
Learning from the digital spaces young people already exist in
To understand what Community could become, I paired our existing youth co-design research with an analysis of the digital spaces young people already knew how to navigate.
Synthesis session after having co-design sessions with youth to determine what exactly they're hoping for in an app.
A market analysis of how social platforms invite people to share, respond and connect within communities.
Key insights from user research that shaped my designs
I translated our user research into a set of familiar interaction patterns, giving young people simple ways to discover conversations, share what they’re going through and support others.
Suggested topics help young people filter through conversations that reflect what they’re navigating, then explore peer perspectives at their own pace.
Moderated and anonymized posts allow for Kooth staff to ensure the in-app community is safe and promotes overall wellbeing and connection between users.
Users have agency to bookmark posts they'd like to return to or hide posts that might negatively impact them or their mental health.
“I feel less alone and am able to focus more inside and out of school, knowing I can get the help I need, and want.” — Soluna User
From concept to a statewide mental health platform.
I delivered Soluna’s Community experience through final interaction design and engineering handoff, bringing youth-centered peer connection into the launched product.
Across the broader platform, Soluna reported 160,000 registered young people in California in its 2024–25 data. User feedback showed 87% accessed the mental health support they wanted, while 49% reported they would otherwise lack access to services. An independent Northwestern University evaluation found reduced distress and improved wellbeing after one month, with gains sustained at three months.
Source: Soluna Impact
TOOLS
Figma, Figjam
FOCUS AREAS
Interaction design, youth-centered design, social support, digital health product design, competitive analysis, user research synthesis, stakeholder collaboration
TEAM