Nadine van den Berg

Mina

Gain more self-esteem with Mina in a fun and effective way! Our smart mirror is here to help users boost their self-esteem through daily short assignments. We designed Mina to help people recognize and believe in their own potential and qualities. And the best part? Mina can be used in the comfort of your own home, where you feel safe and secure.

The Client

Mina is a startup that helps people to gain more self-esteem through daily short assignments. They offer toolboxes, workshops, trainings and more.

The goal

Mina was initially designed for unemployed people over 50: people with a wealth of experience, talent and potential, who just couldn’t find a job. In recent years, partly due to Covid, it has become clear that it is not only the over-50s who are struggling with this. This lack of self-insight and self-confidence is also common among young people. The lack of self-confidence in our society is something that causes problems in several places. Mina can offer a solution to this problem!

My role

As the product owner, I represent the needs and priorities of the end users to the development team. I am responsible for defining the product vision and roadmap, prioritizing features and requirements, and managing the product backlog. I also communicate progress and updates to stakeholders, including customers and the development team. My role is crucial in ensuring that we build a product that aligns with the product vision and goals, and meets the needs of the users and the business.

The result

During our preliminary research, we closely involved the target group in the design process. They carried out various assignments and gave us weekly feedback. After a week of talking to their mirror, almost all participants noticed that they were more positive about themselves compared to the beginning of the tes,t with the exception of one person, who was already positive and remained so.

Mina’s daily short assignments stimulate the growth of self-confidence so that this valuable group of people become aware of their own potential and qualities. As you do these exercises undisturbed in your own bubble, and therefore alone, you can talk freely without having to take into account what others think of you. It starts in an accessible way so there is room to get used to this possibly uncomfortable situation. The longer Mina is used, the more challenging it will become.

At the moment Mina is in the research and development phase. We want to get more attention for the project as a potential solution, create more awareness about the scope of the above social problem, and we want to recruit new partners and customers. This will ensure that Mina can be launched more quickly.
Mina is currently a toolbox, consisting of a (non-interactive) mirror in combination with a 21-day trajectory. In addition, Mina is in the process of becoming smarter. This means that we are in the process of making Mina Interactive and therefore working with smart technology.

Smart Mina will analyze the user during the execution of the exercises and will give tailor-made feedback and compliments based on this information. All this is done in an auditory way. The user only has to turn on Mina and she does the rest. In this we find it important to take into account issues surrounding privacy and security.

So far Mina has won the Hanneke Schreurs graduation prize from the Municipality of Utrecht, was presented at the WHO European Healthy Cities Network Congress(2020) and at Interaction20 Netherlands.

Go to https://deslimmespiegel.nl for the latest updates around this project