Smile App — Get the “Little Voice in your Head” back on your side
The Smile App was an idea based on many micro bits of health and mindfulness information I’d come across over the course of my adult life. I’ve heard so many stats saying how today’s youth is more stressed out than any generation before it, and how stress is the leading cause for so many health problems. Along with that I’ve read about the multitude of benefits of mindfulness, meditation and how positive thinking can rewire your brain and make you a happier person, which in turn makes you a healthier person. It was with this knowledge that I began my needs assessment in a target user group of acquaintances to see if they were stressed, and see how they could be helped with mindfulness techniques.
To gather real data and user need scenarios, I spoke with 3 different individuals, adults ages 25–55. They each described to me various worries they had, what triggered their anxiety, when their anxiety occurred and how it made them feel. I then created a list of possible mindfulness techniques which could be regrouped into one application to address each of the user’s needs. All their needs boiled down to 1 common goal;
User Need — “I am anxious about certain parts of my life at certain times during my day or week, I need help regaining control over my run-away negative thoughts and emotional outbursts. I want to feel more grounded.”
Though some of my initial research could have lead me to create a more social type of App, or some kind of goal-reaching framework, I wanted to keep the App simple, to really provide users with a way to detach and take time for themselves to refocus, without feeling pressure to meet any targets within the App. My ultimate goal with the Smile App was to simply combine a variety of mindfulness activities together to help users quickly change their state of mind and feel more positive about life.
The design concept (5 main tools, mantra, destress break, happy boost, thankfulness and OMM music) remained simple from the beginning and the main advancements that were made revolved around refining the navigation and design of the interfaces. The steps from screen to screen were accepted by the users and easy for them to navigate during all testing sessions, but frequent questions arose about the design of buttons or input functionalities in the calendar scheduling tool for instance.
In the end I was able to revise the calendar input process to make it clearer for users, but I’m sure more testing would be best to make sure it is absolutely intuitive to all users. Additionally I revised the homepage several times, to improve the layout, refine design and navigation tools, all which improved user testing success to get to the final design layout below.
Although I only was able to complete 3 out of the 5 tools (Mantra, Destress Break, Happy Boost) I think the concept is very exciting and I received a lot of positive feedback from users who expressed how much they would love to have an App that can help them reach those Zen moments more easily in their busy lives.
It was a really exciting project, and I learned a lot from the entire process. Hopefully the design can be brought to life and become a real solution for all of us who need to remember to slow down, stop and Smile from time to time.
