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‘Give Me A Break’ is a project that stems from my personal experience with burnout. The burnout that occurred 2 years ago was life-altering and led to many mistakes and life-changing decisions. For example, I quit and left my previous full-time job to enter university due to overwhelming occupational exhaustion. The constant cycle of seeking solutions and support but failing was challenging. Therefore, this project inspired me to innovate an application that helps individuals who are struggling with burnout.
According to the International Classification of Diseases, burnout is a syndrome and occupational phenomenon caused by chronic workplace stress (World Health Organization, 2019). Burnout impacts individuals negatively, such as chronic exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated for prolonged periods (HealthHub, NIL). Burnout can also severely affect physical and mental health, and other aspects of life if left unaddressed (Mental Health UK, NIL). As burnout is an international crisis (Segal, 2022), studies done in various countries show the severity of burnout. For example, Asana has studied 10,000 workers from 8 countries and found that 70% of employees have experienced burnout (Brower, 2022). Hence, ‘Give Me A Break’ wishes to help all individuals, who are expecting, experiencing or have experienced burnout.
Through market research, I found that many online solutions were saturated within the web space of career, burnout or mental health. Many online pages aim to earn profit by selling a product – career coaching courses, podcasts, and online therapy sessions. Therefore, ‘Give Me A Break’ wants to be a free application that genuinely cares about its users’ well-being and be an all-rounded application that provides healthier and better solutions and coping mechanisms for individuals to manage their stress levels.
For this project, I have completed numerous background research, interviews, design aspects (mood board, fonts, design patterns sitemaps and user flows, wireframes) and user testabilities. This project and idea have also gone through countless rounds of improvements and changes to improve the user experience.