ARCS Institute

ARCS Institute is an organization that provides therapy with a revolutionary twist. Through their research and practice, they use personality traits and client history to provide treatment and get results. They have now decided to implement an ARCS digital platform for physicians in order to carry out their approach.

Our design team received the problem and decided to lean into creating and implementing a tool to aid therapists

in treating patients differently.

Background

According to the CDC, nearly 60 million Americans face mental health issues annually.  ARCS Institute, located in Minneapolis MN, was founded by Tanya Freedland to facilitate therapy and research around mental health and substance abuse. ARCS’ stance is to integrate personality traits and client history when diagnosing, making treatment plans, and treating clients.

One may be surprised to learn that mental health treatment does not currently take into account personality traits or client history. Instead, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is widespread today, focuses on treating symptoms. For instance, if a client seeks therapy with a history of alcohol abuse, the actual alcohol abuse will be the main focus of the therapist. However this same client’s manipulative or hostile personality traits, as well as their upbringing or religious background will not be taken into consideration.

This is why ARCS’ approach is so groundbreaking.

Tanya approached our design team with the goal of creating an ARCS digital platform, with the goal of being a tool for physicians to help diagnose and treat clients while taking into account personality traits.

Understanding the Problem

Methodologies

  • Stakeholder interview

  • Scope of Work - SOW

  • Deep dive

  • User evaluation

  • Information Architecture design - IA

  • Sketched, low-fidelity, and high-fidelity wireframing

  • User testing using think-aloud protocol

  • Prototyping

  • Presentation

  • Client handoff

Solutions

Building and testing a physician platform that integrates personality traits within the treatment of mental health issues.

The first step was understanding the problem. Why is ARCS Institute so groundbreaking? How can personality traits not be more integrated in modern counseling? As I mentioned higher, yes, integrating a focus on personality traits into treatment is “revolutionary”. This was confirmed and explained during initial user evaluation, which also brought us information on what physicians would need and want in a digital platform. We interviewed five participants, four of them being clinicians and one researcher, and came up with a list of features that needed to be on the platform. It was also clear from initial intake that Tanya wants to build and train an artificial intelligence tool in order to not only avoid therapist’s blindspots, but also enable the user to access appropriate Therapeutic Interventions like specific worksheets or videos, during a session.

I personally was in charge of content strategy and the lead information architecture designer for this platform. Tanya has a five year plan and a ten year plan for ARCS. Her five year plan, which is what we prototyped, is a platform that is a day-to-day dashboard for physicians to use. It  is an organization tool, what is often called an Electronic Health Record (EHR). It enables physicians to schedule, message, view their appointment, but also take progress notes. The progress notes part is what is aided by AI and where personality traits are incorporated. As such, a physician can have an intake session, record and transcribe it, elaborate a treatment plan, take progress notes, and have AI generated worksheets, for example, to aid in patient treatment.

Tanya’s ten year plan is an ARCS system, encompassing the research, clinical supervision, and continuing education. I specifically made sure that the client’s long term wishes also had a place in our prototype, even if they were not the focus of our project. The header menu with non-clickable drop-downs reflect that.

The ARCS platform was prototyped, tested, and presented to both the client and an audience.

We greatly hope that ARCS Institute will be able to use our prototype and IA to raise additional funding in order to continue building their platform and system, and truly revolutionize the field of mental health and help people heal to live happier healthier lives.

Information Architecture of ARCS System and Platform, by Chloe Dalbard

Outcome

My team designed a platform for therapists to use in their everyday work life. The design reflects ARCS’ five year and ten year development plan. I personally created the Information Architecture and the layout of platform incorporating all of ARCS’ needs and research. We delivered a functioning prototype in order for the Institute to search for more funding and continue their research. I look forward to working with ARCS again in the future.