Psyché: note-taking that keeps therapists present with their clients
A note-taking app for therapists, built for fast input during a session, so they never break contact with the client.
My role:
UX/UI designer, end-to-end (research, IA, UI)
Client
Self-initiated concept
Industry
Note apps
Category
UX/UI · product
Tools
Figma
Overview
Therapists take notes in notebooks, in Word, or in the notes app on a tablet. Every one of those tools pulls attention away: switch apps, scroll, search. And any distraction during a session breaks contact with the client, which is the one thing therapy can least afford.
A therapist's notes aren't just text. They are hypotheses, client biography, therapeutic tasks, interventions, questions to return to: structured information that builds up over years and has to be retrievable in seconds. Existing tools force a choice between good notes and being present. Psyché is designed to remove that choice.
Notes are built from ready-made widgets, not a blank page.
A session note is assembled from widgets: ready-made blocks for what most therapeutic approaches rely on. Research pointed to five defaults that fit the majority of therapists: Interventions, Hypotheses, Tasks, Questionnaire, and client Biography. The structure is already there and matches how a therapist works, so no time goes into building it mid-session. Anything missing is assembled from base blocks: text, list, table, checklist.
Every widget keeps its own history
This is the decision the whole product turns on. Each widget holds today's session under "Current" and everything written in it before under "All". A therapist writes down the biography facts a client mentions now; one tap opens the full biography built across years of therapy. The same holds for tasks, hypotheses, and questions. Instead of searching hundreds of notes, information is organized by type and pulled from inside the widget in seconds. Any widget can be pinned, so it rides to the top of every new note for that client.
Two modes: capture now, analyze later
A therapist works in two very different states, and Psyché keeps them apart. In writing mode the note stays minimal and fast, built for staying present during the session. Switch to comment mode and a second layer opens in the margin: analysis notes for after the session, or for supervision. A comment can attach to a specific widget and travel with it, or float freely in the note. The reflective work never clutters the live one.
Therapy concepts, modeled as real interactions
The widgets encode how the work behaves, not just its labels. A hypothesis has a lifecycle: it is formed, shared with the client, then confirmed or denied. Psyché turns that into state: a table of statements with toggleable columns for "shared" and "confirmed", extendable when a therapist tracks more. Tasks work the same way: a task is set with a grey check, and completing it turns the check green and moves it into the widget's history. This is where the psychology background shows up directly in the interface.
Built around each therapist's method
No two therapists take notes the same way, so the structure bends to them. In Settings, widgets can be renamed, rebuilt, hidden, or created from scratch out of base blocks, and grouped into sets for different kinds of work. Labels act as a flexible taxonomy: a label on a client cascades to all of that client's notes, and each therapist decides what the labels mean, whether that is approach, format, location, or online versus in-person.
The market already proves the need
Research turned up several products already working on this problem, some with AI built in. That confirmed the need is real, and it sharpened where Psyché competes: not on transcription, but on speed of input during the session and fitting each therapist's own method.
Results
Psyché is a complete system, not a set of screens, and still a concept, so the honest next step is validation rather than a launch metric.
Here's what I'd do next:
Do the five default widgets cover what therapists actually record? Is pulling history from inside a widget faster than searching in a live session? Does comment mode get used after the session, or quietly skipped? A week of real sessions with five therapists from different approaches would answer all three.
The other missing piece is onboarding. Psyché trades an easy first look for depth, which is the right trade for a tool used daily over years, but it means the product can't be understood by looking at it. The first run has to teach the mental model.
