Moodbooster Wellness App- A UX/UI Case Study
My second solo project for my Ironhack UX/UI Design bootcamp was to build an app for the National Wellness Institue. Our brief was to create a set of digital wellness tools for NWI coaches, update their image with an innovative and fresh design and create an app that has three functionalities: access to coaches, a way to set goals and a way to track user progress.
I started my research by learning a little more about NWI. According to their website, The National Wellness Institute is an organization founded in 1977 with the mission of “providing health promotion and wellness professionals unparalleled resources and services that fuel professional and personal growth.” They divide wellness into 6 categories and for this project I chose to focus on the Emotional Dimension.
After some preliminary brainstorming I settled on creating an emotional wellness app that would track user’s moods and provide a customizable wellness plan. Once determined, I began the Define stage of the Design Thinking process.
My first task was to look up the competition. I downloaded several mindfulness and wellness apps ranging from Headspace, which offers a wide range of emotional wellness tools, to Daylio, an app that focuses on self-care through the use of a diary that helps set daily goals.
Through comparing the features of these apps through the Competitive Feature Analysis Chart I discovered that none of the apps offered timed sprints where a user could set a predetermined goal for their emotional wellness journey as well as most didn’t have access to coaches.
With this knowledge I created a Marketing Positioning Chart where I sought to find the uncontested area of the marketplace, my Blue Ocean. I charted the apps according to their position on the 2 axes, from generic to personalized apps with fewer or excessive features.
I found the Blue Ocean to be an area where the app is highly personalized but contains fewer, more distinctive and user friendly features.
I began my Lean UX canvas by determining the business problems and goals and user profiles and benefits. I found that potential business problems could be a user’s attention span- that most apps tend to be deleted if they lack value and that a positive business outcome would be a high app retention rate.
On the user side I found that customers would most likely be people who are open to mindfulness and positivity and who value their mental health. Their benefits would include achieving a better wholistic outlook and a better way to track, manage and improve stress and anxiety levels.
I conducted user research to determine who my users actually were. I completed 5 interviews and received responses to 39 surveys and questionnaires.
Some qualitative information gathered from my interviews:
“It takes time to be able to control your thoughts and feelings, but when you do, your life will be so much easier”
“I really don’t like how you have to pay to get good stuff. That makes me stressed which takes away from from the purpose of the app”
“I try to meditate here and there with guided meditations on anxiety and stress, but not as much as I’d like. I don’t keep track of my moods but I want to start.”
“It would be nice to have another app like headspace but focused on some other area of wellness. Also, tracking mindfulness habits seems stressful through an app so if there is a way to make it less stressful then I think more people would use it.”
Once I broke down the survey data and interviews into quotes and phrases I grouped the information according to trends and themes. I created an Affinity Diagram to showcase what I had found.
I found that people are open to self care and willing to try new things but they were still concerned with stigmas and various stressors.
I took my biggest data points and created a User Persona to show mental models and goals, needs and paint points of my users.
Some pain points are that there are too many apps on the marketplace and that users don’t know which ones to trust.
I took this persona and walked her through a User Journey Map to show the process of downloading and using a wellness app.
Her biggest frustrations were there are too many apps on the marketplace, she’s not entirely sure what wellness means. She doesn't really know how to make her mental health a priority and wasn’t sure how much time to dedicate to her practice.
From here I wrote out three problem statements for my user:
- Our user is discouraged and overwhelmed because they’re not sure how to create a wellness plan
- Our user is confused and lost because they don’t know which wellness tools they should be practicing that is best for them
- Our user is unsure and disappointed because they don’t know when they should return after completing a wellness session
I began the Develop phase by turning these statements into How Might We questions. How might we…
…help our users navigate through various features so that they can make a wellness plan?
….help our user get solutions about which mindfulness tools they should be utilizing?
…help our user to understand when to return to their mindfulness practice?
Once I created my How Might We questions I began ideating and brainstorming possible solutions to my problem statements. I listed potential problem solvers for each.
I ran these ideas through the MoSCoW method, filtering them through won’t, should, could and must to determine which features were fundatmental to my design.
I completed the Value Proposition Canvas to align the products and services, gain creators and pain relievers to my user. This is where I sought to add value by combining the business and customer sides to see where problems meet solutions.
I detrmined my Value Proposition Statement to be:
When a user is feeling anxious or unsure about how to successfully execute a wellness plan our mindfulness app will allow them to create a personalized, structured plan, connect with coaches and set and track goals to improve their mental health.
This led me to my MVP, minimum viable product:
A mood boosting app with a customizable wellness plan with access to coaches, a daily plan of action, and goal setter with progress tracker.
Now that I had determined what features I was designing, I created a User Flow chart to see the happy path of the onboarding process.
Next I began the final phase of the Design Thinking process, the Deliver stage. I started prototyping and created a Lo-Fi mockup in InVision and tested it in Maze.
I received mostly positive feedback from my testing however I did make some changes to my Mid-Fi mockup, namely removing the dashboard button from the menu to make it less repetitive.
I created my Mid-Fi prototype in Figma and once again tested in Maze.
Although the Maze misclick rate was high, I noted that my users were attempting to select buttons and fill out forms as they navigated through the app, showing the mental model was on the right track. Some negative feedback was that the “chat with coach” feature wasn’t where they users thougtht it would be, so I moved it to the main navigation menu in my final iteration.
Next I did a Visual Competitive Analysis of two wellness apps on the market today, Sanvello and Fitmind. I found them to be a little cold and not as engaging or safe as I would image a wellness app to be.
With that in mind I defined my brand attributes:
- Serene
- Calm
- Playful
- Hopeful
- Safe
I created a mood board with these brand attributes in mind and tested it with 5 users.
Some of their feedback was that it was “calming” made them feel “ a sense of zen, safe and relaxing.” One user exclaimed “I don’t really get the plant guy.”
I created a style tile with this feedback in mind and once again tested it.
Some feedback I received was “your logo looks like something my son would see in school” and “I love the sunrise aspect to it and find it calming.”
I redesigned the logo and created my Atomic Design that ultimately I brought in to my Hi-Fi prototype.
My next steps for this project will be to test my Hi-Fi and build out the rest of my user flows. I would like to add some more interactions and fine tune any current errors. I learned a lot during this solo project. I really understood the Design Thinking process a lot more for this sprint. I also realized I enjoy building apps and found it easier than building the event microsite from my last project.
*All images were used for student work only
