Week 8 & 9: Converging into a specific wellbeing topic: The Inner Critic

Uncovering more specific insights and brainstorming meaningful solution concepts

Funny to notice that I come back here each week and I still have something along the same lines to start with — what a crazy two weeks for thesis! My thesis faculty Krystal thinks I've had a breakthrough, and I finally believe that’s true :)

In the last 10 days, I managed to go back to the drawing board and complete two huge tasks:

1. Firstly, I finally decided on a specific problem space within the broader problem space to flip it back to why wellbeing matters. This helped me ground my broader problem statement better (How might we consistently maintain and build mental wellbeing?). That said, this step was hard; I was in a major dilemma as tried to choose a specific topic, there are so many! Anyway, I decided to just push forward with one: The Inner Critic. It seemed to resonate with people in the first instance and in a very big way, with me too.
2. Secondly, I went back and restarted the process to dig into my specific problem space — assumptions, desk research, user interviews to validate assumptions, pain points, value props and insights.

So, to reiterate: my theme is now The Inner Critic and my WIP problem statement is:

How might we recognise, befriend and hence bring compassion to our inner-critic?

And as mentioned, I tied it back to the broader topic of wellbeing. The Inner Critic lies withing the subtopic of self-acceptance, one of the 6 big components that contribute to wellbeing.

And here’s why it was important to solve this problem.

Desk research, interviews and insights

Target users

Considering almost everyone has an inner critic, I tried to narrow down and identify a user group I wanted to focus on to start with. And while I initially began thinking of targeting people who don't have access to therapy and lack awareness around this part, I ended up choosing a group that who would likely use this product and had some awareness.

Here are some characteristics of my target user group:

• People who are aware of the idea of an inner critic and intuitively know they have one.
• People who go to therapy or are open to the idea of it and recognise that it helps.
• People interested in personal development/self-improvement/psychology.
• People with low-esteem, who push themselves too hard, are aware of how their childhood has led to having certain tendencies/hardwiring. High achievers.
• People in the age group between 20–35 years.

Key pain points

• People are so used to hearing their own narrations that they become oblivious to the messages that they’re sending themselves. People are unable to detach themselves from their inner critic, and assess their inner voices objectively.
• People aren't aware that their inner critic means well, but doesn't have a helping voice. They are unaware that the inner critic is trying to help, but is doing so by creating fear.
• People instinctively tend to believe their inner critic. Even though in hindsight they know that voice is not entirely right. It tends to be a louder voice in their heads that they listen to.
• People are unable to listen or pay attention to their inner coach or a compassionate voice. It tends to be a softer voice that they don't listen to.
• People fail to consistently recognize, remember and celebrate their wins. They tend to focus on their inadequacies. They are unable to be compassionate towards themselves.

Value props based on pain points

• Recognise your inner critic: Detach from and understand your own inner critic.
• Befriend your inner critic: Grow your inner coach to help bring compassion to your critical voice.
• Cultivate more compassion towards yourself: Celebrate your wins vs focus on your inadequacies

What helps to tackle the inner critic

• Having a good support system that helps one to feel more accepting of themselves.
• Reflection, zooming out and seeing things in a holistic way, journaling — recording and reflecting one’s thoughts in some way.
• Being able the evidence to one's thoughts and see them more objectively. “In reality, I haven't gotten turned down for every interview, I’m not as bad as I think I am”.
• Recognising which areas the inner critic is most active in. Learning more about patterns of the inner critic.
• Recognising when the critic is actually critical and not helpful.
• Saying things out loud and articulating how one is feeling.
• Focusing on the inner coach, the positive voice — What are you doing well?
• Separating the inner critic and seeing it as separate from one's actual self. “In reality, the inner critic is an external voice that has been internalised in one’s childhood.”
• Having a compassionate inner dialogue with oneself. “Feeling this way is natural. What did you learn?”
• Prompts that can help correctly recognise one’s inner critic. “What are you not doing enough of, are doing too much of?”

Key insights

• Changing one’s relationship with their inner critic through compassionate inner dialogue is key in terms of tackling the inner critic.
• It’s all about changing the tone and volume of what one’s inner critic is saying. The inner critic means well.
• People’s inner critic essentially boil down to common themes at the end of the day and there is power in recognising that it’s a shared human space.
• Detaching the inner critic helps from oneself helps them to understand their relationship with it and not take it too seriously.
• Giving the inner coach a supportive voice/character — maybe a movie character like Gandalf or Dumbledore or another wise person in their lives. Making it a character enables people to listen to it as they don’t trust listening to themselves.

Thinking through solutions

Some early ideas

An early-stage solution concept

Feedback and takeaways

What worked well

• The broader idea of the inner critic, the inner coach and awesomeness jar was clear.
• The idea resonated and created excitement. “I could see myself using this”, “I need this in my life”.
• Liked fun elements: the inner coach characters, the awesomeness jar.

What didn’t work well

• The 3 concepts were not as clear as to how they worked together. The details of the platform were not clear.
• Screens were not seen in order, and without that, it was hard to understand how one progresses through the platform.
• The text and images on the concept page had different text so was hard to correlate.
• The inner coach was confusing. People perceived it as a voice of someone else instead of it actually being theirs with a just a different face and tone. The inner coach is actually the same person and not an external AI-generated therapist.

That's it for now! To celebrate my wins I will say, there’s a lot I did over the last week to catch up, so YAY! :)

Lots more to be done for next weeks finals. More soon.