Marriage Counselling Tool

A sensitive workflow

Marriage counsellors at a faith-based organisation in China were running their intake process on paper — lengthy questionnaires, filled in separately by each partner, then manually compared and synthesised into a report the counsellor used to prepare for the first session.

The work was slow, prone to transcription errors, and awkward for couples. Sensitive answers on paper, in duplicate, routed through many hands.

When a tool handles something personal, every interaction matters — the privacy, the tone, the tiny moments of reassurance.

End-to-end ownership

Under my independent practice, I led the full project: discovery, design, and coordination with external development contractors through to launch. I owned the user experience; the contractors handled the build.

The tool had to work for two very different user groups. Couples filling in questionnaires needed privacy, pacing, and gentle interactions. Counsellors needed a structured report they could scan quickly and trust.

• Discovery with counsellors to understand what they actually needed in a report
• Questionnaire flow designed for privacy and pacing — no sharing between partners during intake
• Structured report layout built around how counsellors actually read and use the data
• Coordinated development delivery through external contractors

A tool that respects the moment

The couple-facing interface is intentionally quiet — plenty of whitespace, no progress anxiety, no dark patterns. Answers save automatically; couples can pause and return.

The counsellor report, by contrast, is dense and purposeful. Comparisons at a glance, flagged divergences, structured summary. A counsellor should be able to scan it in five minutes and walk into a session prepared.

Questionnaire questions arrive one at a time, full-screen, with autosave. Couples can pause mid-flow and return later — no progress bar to create deadline pressure. Partners enter separately, in different spaces; answers never collide until the final report. The design treats privacy as a feature, not a constraint.

From paper to product

The tool shipped, was adopted into the organisation's actual counselling workflow, and replaced the paper intake process. It's a small product doing serious work — helping counsellors show up for couples at a difficult moment, with better preparation and less friction.