Kyle Wickline

Work / Kiosks for Connection

Kiosks for Connection

College students who need mental health support often don’t ask for it, and don’t know what their campus already offers. Over two quarters I researched, prototyped, and tested a dining-hall kiosk that helps them start the conversation.

Partner
Mental Health Over Dinner, a nonprofit
Context
Graduate project, University of Washington, 2024
Methods
Creative brief, expert interviews, personas, paper and Figma prototypes, a live test dinner, surveys, interviews
Tested with
Six guests over one dinner
Try it
Click through the Figma prototype

The situation

Mental Health Over Dinner brings people together to talk about mental health over a meal, borrowing the model from Death Over Dinner. The founder wanted to reach college students. The problem was where: students who most need support rarely seek out a resource fair or a counseling office.

A dining hall is different. Students are already there, already sitting with people they know, and not looking for anything. That is where the kiosk idea came from.

Research: campus dining as the place students already gather.
Research: campus dining as the place students already gather.
Research: the gap between need and help-seeking.
Research: the gap between need and help-seeking.

What I did

I started with a creative brief that scoped the project, then pitched the kiosk concept to the founder. I interviewed people who design physical spaces for difficult conversations, which shaped decisions about where a kiosk should sit and how it should look. The short version: nothing like an ATM.

Persona: Sarah.
Persona: Sarah.
Persona: Mia.
Persona: Mia.
Persona: Jake.
Persona: Jake.

The kiosk lets a student explore resources anonymously, plan a conversation, or join one already happening. I built it in Figma, then hosted a dinner to test it. Guests walked through the prototype on a tablet, I produced the conversation scripts by hand on paper cards, and afterward every guest filled out a survey and sat with me for an interview.

A guest walks through the kiosk prototype, with the paper script cards laid out.
A guest walks through the kiosk prototype, with the paper script cards laid out.
Post-dinner surveys at the table.
Post-dinner surveys at the table.

What came of it

Guests called the kiosk intuitive, and over pizza, in about an hour, they talked about things most people avoid. Watching that happen at a table I’d set up is still one of my favorite moments from graduate school.

“Being able to, like, eat something and kind of like, have your own thoughts, but feel safe and respected, was good. I like that.”A guest at the test dinner

The bigger lesson was that the kiosk only works as part of a larger program: partner with campus health organizations as co-hosts, put trained student staff on logistics, add light programming around the meal, and respect the nonprofit’s decentralized model while giving institutions a way in. Those became my recommendations to Mental Health Over Dinner, alongside the prototype.