Designed as a virtual world where avatars interact with one another, SPARX was developed by NIHI and The University of Auckland academics 12 years ago, aimed at teenagers to help them cope with negative thoughts or feelings through games and activities.
The team at NIHI recognized that the customers’ needs have changed over the past decade, and new methods of application development – including Agile – have emerged.
The NIHI team sought to blend clinical integrity and evidence-based features with approaches that respond to the changing user demands of a gaming experience through the engagement of a consultancy firm.
To learn more about SPARX, an online mental health tool that helps young people with mild to moderate depression, please visit https://www.sparx.org.nz/home
The Assurity Design Thinking team implemented two workstreams to NIHI:
• Introduction and embedding Design Thinking (and Customer-Centric thinking) into an already robust product development process
• Introduction of Agile Ways of Working with a Design Sprint, product strategy, and roadmap
Empowerment of NIHI’s SPARX development and product management team by:
• Demonstrating the value of engaging directly with SPARX users
• Introducing Agile methods and moving towards an iterative development approach, with more frequent updates introducing those insights as features or improvements; and a product mindset means always keeping the user at the centre of all activities.
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