[UX] Project Report — Wellness App

8 min readFeb 2, 2019

Introduction

Welcome to my project! My name is Álvaro and today I will write about my project during the Ironhack bootcamp, but first let me tell you a little bit about Ironhack.

Ironhack is a private school that currently teaches intensive courses of 2 or 6 months about programming, UX/UI Design among others, ready to expand classes for new technologies and the demands of companies.

Overview

As part of my first individual project during the Ironhack Bootcamp in Barcelona I will be talking to you about Sleezy, a mobile App that I have been working on during 5 days, my topic, physical wellness. We also have being given instruction to deliver a survey, a low fidelity prototype using Sketch App and inVision, also a presentation of 6 minutes duration.

Note: This is going to be a project regarding the UX part.

Organization

The first thing i did before starting to work was organize myself and the time i will expend in each task.

I decided to base my work on a routine our teachers gave us but since I was starting to work i have been changing my routine.

The idea of having this road map is to remember things that needed to be done during a day, things that you already have done before the next day starts, etcetera…

Once I organized myself I started to focus on “finding the topic”.

Initial steps

Choosing a concrete topic

We have been assigned “wellness” as a main topic and after reviewing all different types of wellness I decided to choose between these 3:

Emotional Wellness
Physical Wellness
Social Wellness

I started to think about them and I decided to choose “Physical wellness” after the 2 first interviews.

I realize that some people has sleeping disorders
I also discover that most of the people don’t sleep the recommended amount of hours.

As Physical wellness is a broad topic I decided to focus on “sleep” as a topic and started to think about questions for the next interviews.

My weapons:

Previous interviews to find a concrete topic
Survey
Interviews
Lean canvas
Crazy eight’s
Empathy map
User persona
Sketch App

Research

Before going to start the interviews we also were asked to do a survey so I started with the “Lean canvas” to find the correct questions for my survey. My objective was discovering about

After doing it I decided to create a Google form with 7 questions and post it on social network…

While the survey was online an receiving answers, I started to formulate the questions for my interviews and doing some interviews.

See appendix to know about questions and answers.

Gathering the information

Survey results (74 answers) & Interviews

69,5% of the respondents are between 25–34 years old.
92,8% do something during the day, work or study.
76,8% cares about their sleeping hours.
76,8% sleeps between 6–8 hours.
40,6% used to think about their sleeping hours.
81,2% consider they could improve managing their time.

Discoveries

Some people get distracted (or they prefer to stay late) with the activities they are doing before going to sleep and they take more time to do so. (Watching TV, playing video games, talking to friends, etcetera…)
Other people has sleep problems and don’t know how to resolve them.
Some people don’t realize how important is to sleep the correct hours.

Problem statement

The problem

After all the work done I discover the following problems:

People don’t know the importance of sleep well
People forgot to go to sleep while doing other activities
People don’t know how to act when they can’t sleep
People don’t sleep the correct hours

Just arrive to the final conclusion that the problem is:

“People that have troubles to sleep need help because they don’t know how to manage the situation”.

Creation of “user persona”

After all the data collected I decided to create a persona to help me during the process. But before that I started with an empathy map so I can know exactly what my user persona needs. That’s when Mark was born!

Ideation phase

Brainstorm

Reminder to go to sleep
Share articles with work/study colleagues
Notifications if the user avoids the hour to go to sleep
Advises to sleep for people that can’t do it

Features

I had Mark on my mind while deciding witch features needed to be in the app.

Notification menu.
Analysis menu to track your sleeping hours, what days you sleep more or less, REM sleep and more.
Articles about sleep world like sleeping disorders, new ways to manage your time…
Alarm to help you manage better your sleeping hours and to help you sleep the hours you want.
Calm button, to help you on days you can’t sleep and of course resolve the problem statement.

Prototyping phase

I started sketching using the “the crazy 8's” based on reminder app’s and my personal thoughts during 5 minutes, after that I did another different version in another 5 minutes. Them mixed all the ideas in one “clean prototype” so I could draw a first prototype and move forward to the testing fase.

I’ve created 3 different prototypes during this phase according to Mark needs. Let me show you how the the design changes because of the feedback received at the testing phase.

Testing phase

I first show my prototype to colleagues at Ironhack to know their first thoughts and after that I went out to test my first prototype on the street…

After the first testing I decided to get ride of the screen where you put your waking up hour and just save the hour when you press “save” in a notification that pops up when waking up after the alarm.

After the second prototype I decided to change the “Alarm” screen to make it easier to use by setting an alarm pressing only one button. Saving clicks and making it easier for the user.

I also changed the Panic button to Calm button thanks to a colleague suggestion. Changed “Emergency!” button to “Relax!” button, so Mark can not be stressed because of the name.

Changes made: Pop up that automatically saves the exact hour, calm button name, relax! button and change the alarm menu.

Third prototype — Sketch prototype

Using Sketch APP I started designing my third prototype in a low fidelity.

Conclusions

The last prototype wasn’t as good as I think it can be but i am very proud of all the work I’ve done in just 5 days. Some features like the analysis and article menus can be improved but I decided to stay focus on the main feature that was the “calm button”.

I still need to learn A LOT, but that’s why I am studying.

inVision Prototype

Click HERE to try the prototype.

As i didn’t had a lot of time I decided to test it at home with family and there weren’t issues but i think that if I would test it more I would probably find more issues and things to improve. The more the better…

Also i would introduce a bit more of text for people that don’t know nothing about my project or UX…

After that I organized my presentation document and wrote this medium post that you are reading right now.

Solutions to the problem

Calm button, to help you relax when you can’t sleep.
Feature to set up an alarm and manage your sleeping hours.
Articles and notifications to keep you update an informed.

Key Learnings

I learned how to manage my time better and how to organize myself.
Better understanding about the design thinking process.
As it was a 5 days project I learned to keep focus in a simple as possible solution.
When creating a persona, always keep the persona on mind to don’t loose track.

Challenges

The biggest challenge I had during the project was trying to keep an idea as simple as possible as I didn’t had a lot of time to create a lot of features for the app.

What would i do differently next time?

I would spend more time with interviews and surveys to get more data to analyse so I can make the app works even better for the users.

So far my project report, just one last note, at the end of the post you will find the appendix with a lot of information collected during the project. Hope you like my post, if you did, clap and leave your comment!

Appendix

Questions

Survey questions:

How old are you?

2. During the day I…

3. Normally when the night comes…

4. From 1 to 5, how much do you care about your sleeping hours?

5. How many hours did you NORMALLY sleep per night in the last month?

6. Do you get stressed thinking about your sleeping hours?

7. How good are you managing your time?

Interview questions:

Tell me about your daily routine.
Do you normally practice any sports?
How good are you managing your time?
What do you normally do before going to sleep?
How many hours do you normally sleep?
How often do you sleep less than needed?
What reasons do you have to sleep less.

Interview answers

Interview 1

She likes to sleep
She’s good managing her time
She normally sleeps the correct number of hours
She don’t practise any sports

Interview 2

She suffered anxiety and stress -> Insomnia
She could not sleep during that time
She use to drink infusions to relax
She does social activities and goes to the gym 2 a week
She likes to be busy
She sleeps around 6 hours each day and for her is enough
If she sleeps more than that she feels tired and slow
She watch movies and series to relax herself before sleeping

Interview 3

She cares about sleeping hours
She watch tv before going to sleep
She eats early to sleep well

Interview 4

He loves sleep
He normally goes to sleep late and wakes up early
On weekends he sleeps more than 8 hours
She watch movies and play videogames before going to sleep
He don’t practise any sports

Interview 5

He sometimes goes to sleep late because of a tv show
He tries to sleep the correct hours
On weekends he goes to sleep a little late and wakes up later

Interview quotes:

“Some nights I go to bed I can’t stop thinking, them I realize I can’t sleep”
“I tried drinking teas, but I just can’t”

Test’s during prototyping phase

First prototype testing

Test 1

The user didn’t have any problem.
The user thinks putting the waking up time is a lost of time.

Test 2

The user didn’t have any problem.

Test 3

The user didn’t have any problem.

Second prototype testing