Revamping a vast mental health library to benefit thousands

The Human Aspect Foundation (THA) works to redefine mental health through increasing psychosocial knowledge and removing its stigma. The foundation was founded in Norway in 2016 by Jimmy Westerheim after being started while he was working for Doctors Without Borders in Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Greece. THA is most known for creating The Life Experience Library. The team interviews people from all over the world about their life’s toughest challenge and the lessons that they’ve learnt from them, and records them in written form for users worldwide to read. The library allows them to search for interviews based on what they may be experiencing at that time, exploring hundreds of stories and lessons shared by someone who has endured a similar struggle. It is already one of the largest free digital resources within mental health in the world. The team lacked the developer support needed to maintain the website and enable it to deal with the increasing volumes of traffic. With this upgrade, it would be able to give the users around the world a much more therapeutic, useful and interactive experience.

Solution

Tech To The Rescue matched the team with ESPEO, a Polish software house, whose team quickly got to work. It involved developers from its Junior Academy – which is an internship program associating academics and young professionals developing their skills – and others who were between commercial projects, all under the guidance of an experienced Delivery Manager. The team dramatically improved the user interface, stopped the glitches that were causing the site to break from overuse, and boosted content interactivity – e.g. through a pop up which asked the reader whether they would benefit from support with the particular mental health problem that they were currently reading about on the site.

Effect

The website has already gone live. The new design has been met with great enthusiasm from members of The Human Aspect Team, who believe that it will make a significant difference to both engagement and readership. It has also brought about several internal benefits for ESPEO, boosting employee motivation.
Thanks to Espeo, people can now not just watch video interviews but also reflect on them. A goal was to make those resources more accessible and user-friendly, especially for recurring users who watch more than just one video.
The website is supposed to reach 10k people monthly in the nearest future.
ESPEO will continue to work with the NGO on further developments to its product.

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