Fighting Depression with the Right Self-Serve Digital Tools

At 10Clouds we started 2022 by establishing that the No. 1 Pillar of the company strategy is People. And that decision opened the doors to a range of measures which addressed the most important aspect of caring for our employees - ensuring their collective wellbeing. We’ve implemented a range of measures to support our mental health, including working with Wellbee, which you can read more about here.

But we know that it has been a turbulent few years for everyone - first with Covid, and then the war in Ukraine, and we wanted to do more to help society at large get the right support with their mental health. As founding members of Tech To The Rescue, we’re also dedicated to using our skills and resources to support pro-bono projects, so when The European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) put forward a brief about needing support with building a new website linking to its iFight Depression Tool, we were keen to get involved!

This was part of Tech To The Rescue’s Sprint for Impact initiative, which aimed to deliver digital results quickly, so we formed a team and got to work!

About The European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD)

The European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) is an international non-profit organization with the aim of improving care and optimizing treatment for patients with depressive disorders.

About The iFight Depression Tool

The iFightDepression® tool is a guided, online-based self management programme for people suffering from mild to moderate forms of depression. It is based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy and access is provided through a guide ( - they can be a general practitioner or mental health professional who has completed the course).

Where did 10Clouds come in?

10Clouds took on the task of building a multilingual landing page linking to iFightDepression tool, allowing guides to register, and people suffering from depression to find their guides. Among other things, it needed to include:

• step by step information for people suffering from depression on how the tool works and what should they do to gain access
• step by step information for potential guides on how to register to the program.
• A visually attractive database of guides for people to choose from.

We began with a kickoff meeting with the EAAD team in which we clarified the brief and delved deeper into the requirements. As mentioned previously, the project was part of the Sprint for Impact initiative at Tech To The Rescue, we had a swift turnaround time - 2 weeks for discovery, research, mind-mapping, wireframing, UI design, development, and QA!

Alicja Białek, Product Development Manager, says: “It was such a pleasure working with the EAAD. The process was smooth from start to finish. We received feedback quickly and it felt that we were very aligned on the goals throughout.”

A note on the design

We used the old brand style of IFightDepression and updated it so that the new site would visually link to the leading site and the tool while retaining a modern look and feel. As the site is centered on the difficult subject of depression, we spent time ensuring that we’re creating the right look and feel to reflect the subject matter.

Artur Koniarev, Product Designer, says: “We chose hope for a happy future, for a solution to all problems. The users who come to the website need to see that it’s okay to struggle, to identify themselves with this problem; they’re already halfway there to getting help. The idea is to show that it’s not as scary as it seems. So we made a design that’s positive and empowering. We featured imagery which included people of different ages, and races - because depression is something that doesn’t discriminate. We also made sure that the interface and navigation were intuitive, so users can find the information they need in no time at all.”

The outcome

We’re excited that the website is now live and can be viewed here. It’s still very early days, but the hope is that it will hold the details of 25-30 thousand specialists in the database and will be used by more than 300 thousand people per day.

We’ve received highly positive feedback on our work from members of the EAAD team. We’re also very pleased to see that the iFightDepression tool has been translated into Ukrainian, which means that Ukrainian refugees spread all over Europe can now have access to the help they need when dealing with psychological trauma.

The positive impact of the project on our team and the wider company cannot be underestimated. All the 10Clouds team members were super keen to put their skills to use on a project which will clearly deliver significant benefits for people struggling with their mental health. It also received high praise from colleagues across our internal channels.

Want to use your company’s tech skills for good?

If you’re a tech company looking to use your downtime between commercial projects to support a worthwhile cause, take a look at the Tech To The Rescue website. There are many NGOs and charities that may just be looking for a company like yours!