In collaboration with:
product manager, medical advisor, legal and marketing departments
Building value in users by creating self-reflection tools
This case study explores how we designed and implemented a chatbot for our online therapy platform, offering daily mood check-ins and reflection note creation. The goal was to enhance engagement, emotional self-awareness, and free-to-paid conversion, while supporting users’ mental health between therapy sessions.
Problem
Core features like chat and video are locked for non-paying users. While they can complete a survey, they get no immediate value or feedback, which fails to engage them. This lack of reward reduces interest, harms conversion rates, and increases user churn.
Discover
User interviews and competitor analysis revealed that adding features like daily check-ins, mood tracking, and self-help tools can boost engagement by supporting clients between sessions.
Key insights:
▫️ Users want lightweight, judgment-free ways to express emotions
▫️ Many feel isolated between therapy sessions
▫️ Free users need value to stay active in the app
▫️ Users appreciate positive, supportive tone over clinical language
Competitors analysis
Business goals
Driving retention, value, and conversion through emotional engagement
⬇️
Reduce users churn
Reduce
users churn
Emotional self-tracking fosters a personal connection to the app and increases perceived usefulness, making users less likely to leave. Users are less likely to cancel if they feel emotionally attached to their data and progress in the app.
💟
Increase client LTV
Increase
client LTV
Writing reflections and tracking emotions gives users a sense of continuity and self-progress. Users are less likely to cancel if they feel emotionally attached to their data and progress in the app. Consistent daily use creates habit loops, increasing emotional investment in the app.
⬆️
Increase Conversion Free-to-Paid
The chatbot gives free users a taste of value, warming them up to pay for deeper services like real-time chat or video sessions.
Design challenges
Solving for usability, retention, and emotional insight
👍
Ease of use
The interface for creating a record should be clear, without excessive cognitive load. Mood tracker should contain enough options for choosing emotions, symptoms and types of activities so that the user can accurately describe his emotional state.
🤩
Engagement
The tracker needs to engage users without feeling like a chore. This can be achieved by incorporating elements like notifications, reminders, or gamification to encourage regular use. Also the user should be able to customize notifications for more flexible interaction.
📊
Data visualisation
The mood tracker should present data in a way that is easy to understand. The tracker should help users identify correlations between their mood and activities, environments, or thoughts. This requires careful design of the data visualization components to ensure they are insightful without being overwhelming.
During the development of the functionality, a bottleneck appeared due to the lack of resources of the development team. There was a need to implement the functional at a minimum cost.
Design Solution Approach
Design Solution Approach
Selecting suitable mechanics
Selecting suitable mechanics
The main pattern of communication with platform is chat, so chat bot is a logically suitable solution. Also it provide the opportunity to crate a dialog between user and the platform, and use a chat bot for future communications (ex. to propose personalised materials). As a bonus, it was ease of development.
The from of chat bot is not the classical mechanic for the functional of emotional reflection, but it was selected.
The main pattern of communication with platform is chat, so chat bot is a logically suitable solution. Also it provide the opportunity to crate a dialog between user and the platform, and use a chat bot for future communications (ex. to propose personalised materials). As a bonus, it was ease of development.
The from of chat bot is not the classical mechanic for the functional of emotional reflection, but it was selected.
The informational architecture
The informational architecture
Chat bot contains 3 flows:
Chat bot contains 3 flows:
onboardig
daily mood chack-in
reflection note
A separate block is a section for storing and visualizing information
A separate block is a section for storing and visualizing information
User flow
Marketing
To make the chat bot more ‘emotionally attractive’ we decide to create a mascot for chat bot. In collaboration with marketing team, we crated the animalistic character, with safe and attractive image – the coal named Coa.
Mascot
Marketing
To make the chat bot more ‘emotionally attractive’ we decide to create a mascot for chat bot. In collaboration with marketing team, we crated the animalistic character, with safe and attractive image – the coal named Coa.
Mascot
Iterative prototyping and testing
As a result of tests with clicable prototipe were added more emotions, symtoms and actions options fore selection. Also was added functional of adding personal varians to make the moodtracking functional more flaxible and healpful.
Also the bot replics we rewrited to make the dialog with platform more emotional and personalized.
Animated prototype
Impact
From daily habits to paid conversions: measurable early wins
✅
+35% daily app opens among free users
+35% daily app opens among free users
The mood check-in flow helped establish a daily habit, encouraging users to return to the app more frequently.
✅
20% of mood check-in users wrote a reflection in week 1
20% of mood check-in users wrote a reflection in week 1
A meaningful portion of users chose to deepen their engagement beyond simple mood tracking, demonstrating appetite for reflective practices.
✅
Higher engagement linked to more paid trials
Higher engagement linked to more paid trials
Users who consistently interacted with the chatbot were more likely to explore or trial paid services such as chat and video sessions with councilor, supporting the chatbot’s role as a conversion driver.
✅
Top-of-funnel attraction and retention improved
Top-of-funnel attraction and retention improved
By offering valuable free functionality (mood check-in + reflection), we attracted users who were exploring mental health apps but may not be ready to commit to therapy yet.
Outcome
Overall, the implementation of a mood tracker can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your online psychotherapy platform, leading to better user engagement, improved therapeutic outcomes, higher conversion rates, and valuable data-driven insights.
Let's keep in touch
Let's keep in touch
In collaboration with:
product manager, medical advisor, legal and marketing departments
Building value in users by creating self-reflection tools
This case study explores how we designed and implemented a chatbot for our online therapy platform, offering daily mood check-ins and reflection note creation. The goal was to enhance engagement, emotional self-awareness, and free-to-paid conversion, while supporting users’ mental health between therapy sessions.
Problem
Core features like chat and video are locked for non-paying users. While they can complete a survey, they get no immediate value or feedback, which fails to engage them. This lack of reward reduces interest, harms conversion rates, and increases user churn.
Discover
User interviews and competitor analysis revealed that adding features like daily check-ins, mood tracking, and self-help tools can boost engagement by supporting clients between sessions.
Key insights:
▫️ Users want lightweight, judgment-free ways to express emotions
▫️ Many feel isolated between therapy sessions
▫️ Free users need value to stay active in the app
▫️ Users appreciate positive, supportive tone over clinical language
Competitors analysis
Business goals
Driving retention, value, and conversion through emotional engagement
⬇️
Reduce users churn
Emotional self-tracking fosters a personal connection to the app and increases perceived usefulness, making users less likely to leave. Users are less likely to cancel if they feel emotionally attached to their data and progress in the app.
💟
Increase client LTV
Writing reflections and tracking emotions gives users a sense of continuity and self-progress. Users are less likely to cancel if they feel emotionally attached to their data and progress in the app. Consistent daily use creates habit loops, increasing emotional investment in the app.
⬆️
Increase Conversion Free-to-Paid
The chatbot gives free users a taste of value, warming them up to pay for deeper services like real-time chat or video sessions.
Design challenges
Solving for usability, retention, and emotional insight
👍
Ease of use
The interface for creating a record should be clear, without excessive cognitive load. Mood tracker should contain enough options for choosing emotions, symptoms and types of activities so that the user can accurately describe his emotional state.
🤩
Engagement
The tracker needs to engage users without feeling like a chore. This can be achieved by incorporating elements like notifications, reminders, or gamification to encourage regular use. Also the user should be able to customize notifications for more flexible interaction.
📊
Data visualisation
The mood tracker should present data in a way that is easy to understand. The tracker should help users identify correlations between their mood and activities, environments, or thoughts. This requires careful design of the data visualization components to ensure they are insightful without being overwhelming.
During the development of the functionality, a bottleneck appeared due to the lack of resources of the development team. There was a need to implement the functional at a minimum cost.
Design Solution Approach
Selecting suitable mechanics
The main pattern of communication with platform is chat, so chat bot is a logically suitable solution. Also it provide the opportunity to crate a dialog between user and the platform, and use a chat bot for future communications (ex. to propose personalised materials). As a bonus, it was ease of development.
The from of chat bot is not the classical mechanic for the functional of emotional reflection, but it was selected.
The informational architecture
Chat bot contains 3 flows:
onboardig
daily mood chack-in
reflection note
A separate block is a section for storing and visualizing information
User flow
Marketing
To make the chat bot more ‘emotionally attractive’ we decide to create a mascot for chat bot. In collaboration with marketing team, we crated the animalistic character, with safe and attractive image – the coal named Coa.
Mascot
Iterative prototyping and testing
As a result of tests with clicable prototipe were added more emotions, symtoms and actions options fore selection. Also was added functional of adding personal varians to make the moodtracking functional more flaxible and healpful.
Also the bot replics we rewrited to make the dialog with platform more emotional and personalized.
Animated prototype
Impact
From daily habits to paid conversions: measurable early wins
✅
+35% daily app opens among free users
The mood check-in flow helped establish a daily habit, encouraging users to return to the app more frequently.
✅
20% of mood check-in users wrote a reflection in week 1
A meaningful portion of users chose to deepen their engagement beyond simple mood tracking, demonstrating appetite for reflective practices.
✅
Higher engagement linked to more paid trials
Users who consistently interacted with the chatbot were more likely to explore or trial paid services such as chat and video sessions with councilor, supporting the chatbot’s role as a conversion driver.
✅
Top-of-funnel attraction and retention improved
By offering valuable free functionality (mood check-in + reflection), we attracted users who were exploring mental health apps but may not be ready to commit to therapy yet.
Outcome
Overall, the implementation of a mood tracker can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your online psychotherapy platform, leading to better user engagement, improved therapeutic outcomes, higher conversion rates, and valuable data-driven insights.
Let's keep in touch