Strategic user research to inform design of mental health support for jobseekers
Tellmi
A new way of understanding users through experience design has been really helpful and eye-opening. The deeper insight helped tailor solutions that genuinely support them
Mima partnered with Tellmi for the second time on an SBRI (Small Business Research Initiative) funded initiative to extend their digital mental platform to support young job seekers in Oxfordshire. Tellmi’s platform operates as an anonymous, human moderated peer support space, where users access mental health resources, local support services and urgent counsellor support. It is currently the only digital mental health platform commissioned by the NHS.
The year-long program included identifying how to tailor the service for job seekers, developing the extension, implementing and testing it with users and undergoing an SBRI evaluation. Together, we developed two new service extensions that would be provided to jobseekers who are referred to the platform from Jobcentre Plus centres by their workcoaches. Hiremi, a space that provides employment related mental health resources, and Trainmi, a SuperPeer® volunteering program that offers work experience.
Tellmi and Mima partnership complemented each other’s roles, where Mima led research with workcoaches to identify opportunities for the service development along with planning the service components, while Tellmi led the co-creation of the platform’s components with jobseekers to meet their requirements. Our approach aimed to deliver value to both job seekers (addressing confidence, isolation and skills development) and workcoaches, who are able to provide their clients with a supportive mental health tool during their employment journey.
The Challenge
Mima were brought in to understand and address the current, complex, and multifaceted challenges faced by young job seekers, to help Tellmi create a feasible and effective support solution. As Tellmi’s design partner, we worked to provide a strategic structure for understanding an entirely new user group. Extensive desktop research and social listening to understand the current jobseeking landscape allowed us to define potential users, identify the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as a potential buyer, and establish the project’s scope and vision principles. Our target audience was young jobseekers actively looking for work, accessing job centres and working with workcoaches. We mapped out their jobseeking journey, developed feeling archetypes and began mapping what resources would be needed to support people experiencing different emotional states.
Our interviews and group sessions with various workcoaches and employment advisors highlighted the current challenges young jobseekers face: lack of feedback in an AI-led recruitment time affecting confidence, overlapping support needs beyond employment, insufficient support for those with neurodiverse traits, feeling of isolation and a lack of human connection, difficulties communicating skills to employers, and missing local support and opportunities.
Mima facilitated a concept ideation workshop to ideate various solutions and help identify the feasible path forward building on Tellmi's proven platform capabilities, while keeping in mind the practicalities of the program’s delivery timeframes.
The Solution
Together, we developed two integrated service extensions. Hiremi provides jobseeking related mental health resources tailored for job search challengings, and Trainmi offers young jobseekers a SuperPeer® volunteering program where they gain meaningful work experience by supporting others on the platform. Mima helped ensure that both these directly responded to the confidence gap many young people face, of wanting to work but lacking recent experience or opportunities to demonstrate their abilities. Also, by building on Tellmi’s existing SuperPeer® model, we created a pathway that simultaneously addresses the isolation job seekers face, while building practical skills and confidence.
Mima created a service blueprint of the program and together with Tellmi mapped all the service components, touchpoints and resources needed to deliver the program. Mima and Tellmi co-designed a landing page to be made available on the Tellmi website for jobseekers and workcoaches to learn about the two services and use it as a marketing tool to recruit people to the evaluation program.
Our partnership with Tellmi enabled the successful extension of their proven mental health platforms to jobseekers within a structured SBRI evaluation program. By applying human-centred design thinking, we moved from initial concept to a collaboratively developed (co-designing with users) service, ready for implementation and evaluation.
The Impact
Hiremi and Trainmi represent how mental health support can be integrated into employment services. For jobseekers, it offers the ability to build confidence and experience while receiving mental health support in an anonymous and safe space. The volunteering program turns a period of unemployment into an opportunity for skill development, contribution, and directly countering the isolation and lack of purpose many experience.
For workcoaches and DWP, these provide a scalable and accessible solution to support their clients whose mental health challenges create employment barriers. Traditional referral pathways have struggled to address this gap efficiently. The platform’s insights could also offer visibility into support needs within their area.
The project helped position Tellmi effectively to navigate both the NHS and DWP systems and translate jobseeker needs into a proposition that resonates with commissioners. The service framework helps develop a pathway from a pilot to potential national scale, while creating the evidence needed to demonstrate impact during the SBRI evaluation.
Do you have a project that could benefit from user research or service blueprint planning? Get in touch.
