Co-creating Wellbeing Champions: a 5-level course on psychological first-aid for corporate leaders
Role: Service Designer and Content Architect
Collaboration: Co-created with the Clinical Director at Manah Wellness
Focus: Information Architecture, Progressive Disclosure, Behavioral Mechanics
Organization: Manah Wellness
Background
The Wellbeing Champions course is Manah Wellness’s flagship training. It started in 2021 and has evolved into many different versions. My role was to curate and restructure the newest version made specifically for HR Leadership.
Challenge
The Friction: The previous version was outdated and structurally cramped—forcing the curriculum into one massive block or two very long sessions. This heavy, exhausting schedule led to a known issue with participant dropouts.
The Constraint: We could not simply shorten the course to fix the dropout rate. To officially certify these leaders in Psychological First Aid under strict WHO guidelines, the program had to meet a mandatory minimum number of hours.
The Core Challenge: Figuring out how to deliver this mandatory time commitment to busy HR leaders without relying on the heavy, cramped schedules that caused them to drop out in the past.
My Role
End-to-End Architecture: I co-created the core framework with the Clinical Director and took full ownership of building the entire curriculum and user experience from scratch.
Pre-Reads & Emotional Microcopy: Authored preparatory materials for each session. I applied strict UX microcopy principles to carefully map the reader's emotional experience, ensuring the tone made participants feel grounded and supported before tackling heavy clinical topics
Content Decks & Scenario Design: Designed the presentation decks, interactive exercises, and real-world examples. I utilized UX thinking to structure these interactions, minimizing cognitive load and making complex psychological concepts highly digestible.
Post-Training Toolkits & Usability: Developed the take-home toolkits with a sharp focus on usability and recall. I structured the reference materials so that participants could easily find, remember, and apply the specific clinical tools they learned during the live sessions.
Evaluation Logic: Created the final assessment framework to accurately validate participant learning and finalize their certification without introducing unnecessary friction or test anxiety.
Overcoming Participant
Friction
The Behavioral Hurdle:
HR leaders are highly susceptible to schedule disruptions and survey fatigue. Extending a single training into a multi-level certification process inherently increased the risk of participant drop-out.
The Design Solution:
I designed the curriculum to leverage milestone-based progression. The act of "leveling up" from a foundational tier to an advocacy tier created a sense of earned momentum. To reinforce heavy clinical concepts without violating cognitive load limits, I integrated targeted interactive role-plays and gamified mechanics into specific exercises (abstracted here to protect intellectual property). This blend of structural progression and active play ensured high retention through the rigorous evaluation criteria of each tier.
Outcomes
Successfully launched the first fully remote cohort, proving the digital viability of the new architecture.
Translated rigid WHO/EASA clinical compliance guidelines into an engaging, multi-touchpoint user journey.
Delivered a complete, scalable service toolkit (pre-reads, slide decks, evaluations, and reference guides) adopted for ongoing enterprise implementation.