Mental Wellbeing Planning Tool

Following a thorough literature review, Paper Giant co-designed PACE with a diverse group of lived-experience participants.

PACE is presented as a Plan on a Page. You can download the PDF template from the Beyond Blue website, print it out, fill out the questions, and stick it on your fridge. Beyond Blue is developing a web form version with the potential to become a mobile app.

PACE uses the catchphrase ’Pause, Act, Connect, and Enjoy’ to assist users in developing manageable routines tailored to their specific needs. The program helps identify activities that enhance mental well-being without imposing universal rules.

Paper Giant co-designed this mental wellbeing tool with nine research participants, who came from a range of backgrounds and circumstances.

The participants were very clear that they wanted an easy-to-remember acronym for this planning tool. Through Paper Giant’s discovery, testing and refinement process during workshops, participants arrived at PACE.

Beyond Blue said they were open to various formats for the planning tool. Paper Giant workshopped several solutions and prototypes (including a card game and an app). In the end, the participants overwhelmingly preferred the most straightforward and immediate solution, the Plan-on-a-Page worksheet with the handy acronym.

In the spirit of co-design, participants were given a high level of influence over the tool’s content, format, and strategic direction, and the produced outcomes were directly determined.

The Plan-on-a-Page is a simple, analogue design solution that can be used immediately. It’s suitable for people with low levels of digital literacy (and for people whose wellbeing priorities include time away from their phones!).

In the longer term, participants favoured a customisable mobile app. PACE is a personalised tool; ideally, users should be able to use it in their preferred format.

We put a lot of time and thought into recruitment for the co-design workshops. We recruited participants who have personally experienced adversity that impacted their mental health, those who have experienced a mental health condition(s), and those who have cared for someone with either of these experiences.

It was important to have First Nations perspectives and to engage people with different lived experiences of mental health challenges. Their experiences come through strongly in the ‘Connect’ category, focusing on connecting with country and land.

Our workshops were held remotely, meaning we could include people from various geographic locations. Paper Giant facilitators are experts in trauma-informed facilitation. The sessions were structured to ensure the safety of all participants and designed with clear ground rules to ensure a respectful and constructive environment.

These workshops took place over an unusually short, concentrated period—just eight weeks. Trust normally takes time to build, but the concentrated approach worked well for this group. Perhaps this is because, by meeting regularly, we could pick up where we left off quickly.

From the client: “I personally found the rapid design of the PACE Wellbeing tool powerful and collaborative.”

PACE is an agnostic tool that has the potential to take other forms. Beyond Blue practitioners were present and active throughout the workshops and understood the thinking behind it. They now own the iterative process and are building a web form version. In the long term, there’s potential for a customisable mobile app.

This is a great example of design excellence in Victoria. Beyond Blue is a Melbourne-headquartered household name in Australia and trusted by Australians. They are working towards steering the public conversation – and, in turn, public behaviour – towards prevention and early intervention initiatives. PACE is a big part of that.

The beauty of PACE is that it isn’t prescriptive. Many other evidence-based wellbeing planning tools encourage users towards more sleep, improved diet, and increased exercise.

This makes sense in theory, but it can be counterproductive. If you have a newborn baby, for example, seven hours of sleep per night may be unachievable and out of your control. Reminders to get more sleep are unhelpful.

But other small, helpful wellbeing actions (e.g., a hot bath, a phone chat with your sister) are not out of your control. PACE reminds you to make time for them. That is the beauty of the PACE tool. It doesn’t dictate. It empowers you to choose what works best for your wellbeing and what is within your control.

PACE encourages users to reflect on their own memories of moments of wellbeing. Each user builds their personal wellbeing plan based on these reflections. The plan is grounded in the personal experience of what works.

PACE is innovative because it synthesises academic research (we know that wellbeing is built from small, impactful moments) and insights from lived-experience participants (make it simple; make it personal). The result is a tool that anyone can adapt to their own purposes.

Spending in Australia on mental health-related services is currently around $12.2 billion. Much of this spending is concentrated on crisis services. The estimated cost of mental illness and suicide to the Australian economy is about $43–70 billion each year.

There’s an urgent need for prevention and early intervention initiatives. PACE could become a household concept and have a daily impact. PACE is accessible to people from many backgrounds. You can figure out your PACE plan alone or with a friend or health professional. It’s easy to translate into other languages. It’s a tool that works in multiple formats, including as a simple printout. It could be rolled out to primary schools. PACE could be to mental wellbeing in Australia what ‘slip, slop, slap’ has been for skin cancer prevention.

In our recommendations for future iterations, Paper Giant has suggested a mobile app. The functionality and personalisation afforded by an app mean that users could get the most out of the tool and incorporate mental wellbeing habits into a device they use daily. Participants had a strong desire for an intimate, repeatable, and integrated experience of planning mental wellbeing.

Our product-plan recommendations include testing and launching an MVP mobile app. The plan includes a forum for user feedback and a place to upvote new features for further iterations.

Between 5 December 2023 and 29 April 2024, the PACE PDF tool was downloaded 4970 times. In the same timeframe, the wellbeing action tool webpage had ~ 15k page views (so ~30% conversion).