Wellness App — UX Project Ironhack
The next individual project that we were doing at Ironhack Bootcamp was the Wellness app. We had the freedom to choose any of the areas of health. I decided to focus on Stress Reduction and Relaxation. Since our client is the National Wellness Institute, I will try to unlock its value and the users. The idea was to propose a new mobile app designed to support and improve wellness.
Question is: Are you under stress?
OVERVIEW
In the Discover phase of this process, I conducted research going from research to interviews and surveys. I find some relevant user insights that I analyzed and synthesized, leading me toward the Define phase.
With all this data about the users and their habits, I was able to identify unusual issues and demands and my target audience.
In the Develop phase, I started ideating how to improve my potential user’s life and address their main problems. I had to think of what features could be included in the app.
Therefore, I have built prototypes that I have tested among my target audience to collect feedback and then iterate to improve the design.
In the Deliver phase of the process consisted of building the solution.
DISCOVER
THE CLIENT
National Wellness Institute is an organization with the mission of providing health promotion and wellness professionals services.
- Their program has been slow to catch up with technology.
- They have seen a substantial drop in memberships and want to find a way to add value to their members.
- They would like to implement a balance of technology with the in-person element.
To do so, I based myself on user research to identify an opportunity to develop an app that will improve users’ day-to-day life.
SECONDARY INDUSTRY RESEARCH
In recent studies, the top most stressful jobs are a surgeon, commercial airline pilot, photojournalist, advertising account executive, and real estate, agent.
A CNN poll reveals that the number one reason for stress in most countries is money.
Before we go deeper into user research, let’s focus first on the business side.
Business analysis
I started with the Lean UX Canvas to identify business problems, outcomes, and users’ benefits in the discovery phase. One of the business outcomes is that people are improving their mental status to have less stress. The solution is the idea of having a personalized coach, workout, music, and meditation.
Let’s see what kind of app is already on the market and what they provide to their users.
Competitive feature Comparison
Using this chart, we can see what kind of feature competitors offer and what is users expect. Comparing the five apps: Calm/Happify/Headspace /Sanvello/Pacifika/shows that most apps seem to follow a particular pattern. They are either quite technical and based on tracking or sleep alarms or have meditation and music as their main topic. From there, we can identify the blue ocean as opportunities for Design.
Market Positioning Chart
Doing Market Positioning Chart allowed us to see which directions other competing apps are currently focused on. From there, our blue ocean lies between personal counseling and multiple treatment options.
To discover target users, we are focusing now on User research to understand their pains and needs.
User Research
I created a Survey on Google forms and shared it on various groups on Reddit, Facebook, and Whatsapp. Surprisingly, around 67 people responded to it. Here are the main results:
65% of the people have preferred meditation as a stress relief remedy.
47.8% of people talk to a friend when they are under stress.
During our research phase, I interviewed ten users. I discovered more about their habits, wellness app experiences, and their pain points using the app.
All the interviews I was doing online through the Zoom app.
“When I’m stressed out, I always keep myself busy, either exercising, listening to music, or talking to a friend.” — Stephan N.
“It bothers me when I see too many questions for creating a new account on the app.” — Maria M.
Other insights that I gained through the interviews were the lack of available persons to check in on the users and support it.
With all this data in our hands, we are ready for the define stage.
DEFINE
To define which main problems to specify on, I was first using the method of organizing my information through the Affinity Diagram.
I grouped what I found from the surveys and user interviews.
I narrowed down some pains and gains:
- Too many questions for creating an account.
- People wish for anxiety relief.
- “I need to set the goal.”
- “I prefer to have a personalized coach.”
- “I’m too stressed due to COVID.
We identified customer pains and gains, but what is their job to be done?
Value Proposition Canvas
We can conclude that it is essential to know who your customer is, what his lifestyle looks like, and what his real needs are. Customer jobs can be functional, social, and emotional. In this case, jobs are getting rid of the stress, talking to the expert, login, or create an account.
Let’s see who our user is.
User Persona
With all the information from the surveys and interviews, I created a user persona named Donna Johnson. She lost her job due to COVID, and she is in a stressful position. Her frustrations and pain points are:
- “Which treatment is the best for me?”
- She would like to know if anyone is available to guide her.
- The frustration of creating an account
Her goals (needs) are:
- She wants to manage the stress.
- To find the app that will motivate her.
- Receive feedback on her progress
- Looking for an app that has a coach
My next step is the User Journey Map.
User Journey Map
As a holistic view of User experience, we can see the pain points our users are experiencing from being under stress to finding the app, signing in, using that app, and having the results.
The low points are circled and referred to as opportunities.
Doing this helped me in getting to a clear Problem Statement:
DEVELOP
Ideation
We use this inventive and enjoyable process as divergent thinking before refining and narrowing down to the best idea of convergent thinking. This is an excellent tool for generating new ideas on known problems and organizing your thoughts. It encourages me to come up with thoughts and unusual ideas.
Which features should be included?
I define what features are a must / should have or should instead be dismissed to avoid a cluttered prototype through the Moscow Method. The focus is to build an MVP, so narrowing down the must-haves are crucial at this point in the process.
Now when we have a must feature that we will implement first, let look at how that will fit in the market.
Value Proposition Canvas — Product Market Fit
The new app will contain progress reports, personalized coaches’ assistance, and different contact options. In that way, some of the pain relievers would be :
- Not being alone
- More confidence in the progress
- Reduce time on task
- Having support
In the next stage of creating the Mvp solution, we jump back to recap the most valuable pain points. That will help us to focus on the essential issues that our users have.
Recap Problems and MVP
Can I talk to a qualified person online?
Which treatment should I choose?
There are too many questions for creating an account.
Does this app have all the mental illnesses that I want to cure?
Our minimal viable product contains only what is needed to give the customers a realistic experience of how the product would work. Here is the MVP for our proposed Wellness app:
Our Minimum viable product is the wellness app feature that allows users to choose between treatment options with personal coach assistance.
Main Feature story:
When the user is anxious and stressed, he wants to promptly log into the app and have guidance with the right treatment to be closer to remedy, making them feel self-confident and trustful.
Now that I have decided which elements are the building blocks of my app, it's time to establish tasks and user flow. How will the user navigate through the app and access the coach’s assistance?
User Flow Chart
Based on my feature and a product, I create this “happy path” user flow. This helps me to start making my concept sketches and a lo-fidelity prototype.
Users will have the option to choose how he feels, and then to set up the goal, choose the therapy and talk to the coach. In the end, they will be able to track and see their weekly progress.
DELIVER
Lo-fi Prototype
I created a lo-fi prototype base on my user flow. From there, I gain Usability test results. And surprisingly, they were 100% success between 5 testers. The feedback that I received was “Clear, neat, and I know what I should click next.”
The flow works as follows; a new user would sign up with apple, enables fingerprint, log in with apple, and start with the app. Then would choose stress as mood; the goal is to reduce stress with meditation and with coach selection via video call. Then they would rate the coach and check the progress.
Mid-Fi Prototype
I sent the mid-fi prototype to Maze for usability testing, and the results between 12 users were 87 % usability score. The home page was confusing for most testers, as well as the goal page. From those insights, I had pivots in organizing the pages. I discover I’m missing the landing page to introduce users to the app rather than asking them for the first task, not knowing the next step in the app.
Instead of choosing only one goal, allow users to select multiple purposes.
Also, one of the qualitative data responses was that the progress bar is not clear enough. They were confused with progress from before and after clarifications.
So there is another pivot to design this page to be user-friendly to know what their progress is.
Visual Competitive Analysis
I did a competitive visual analysis of our competitors to evaluate their design strategies and determine their strengths and weaknesses.
Now we have an overall feel of the brand colors, layouts, and typefaces. That will help me benchmark or visualize what our user’s mental models are currently visually.
Brand attributes/Mood board/ Desirability Test
I created a Mood board for the app and did desirability testing with ten users.
90% of the users said that it is “Calm, Happy, and Relax,” which matches my Brand attributes of positive and optimistic.
Style System
I created a design system to use throughout the project. This enabled me to develop the app more quickly and gave me consistency throughout the Design.
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
See the high-fidelity walkthrough of the app here:
LANDING PAGE
Along with the app, I create a landing page. Unlike web pages, which typically have many goals and encourage exploration, landing pages are designed with a single focus or purpose, known as a call to action (or CTA, for short).
Success and Failure Metrics
Key Learnings
- Importance of usability testing and qualitative data
- Improve Xd by constantly practicing
- User flow-What user sees, what user Do
- Do as many research as you can
- User interview offers insights into product expectations
Next Steps
- Continue to add earlier proposed Feature and test it
- Propose changes based on continually collected data research
- User feedback on a new feature
- Learn, Research, Test…
Thank you for reading my case study. Let’s connect! https://www.linkedin.com/in/milenavasic6/
