Designing for wellness
Wellness is defined as the act of practicing healthy habits on a daily basis in order to achieve a better health, both in a physical and mental capacity.
This week’s project consisted in developing a product that helped users achieve some level of wellness in their lives, focusing on one specific problem. Given the crazy times we are living, I decided to focus my research in the (huge) amount of people who have continued to work and study from home during this pandemic.
The research started with a competitive business analysis, I was trying to find what already is out there that targets sedentary/low activity users. I analyzed mobile applications such as the Nike and Garmin fitness tracker and a couple of global wellness companies like GAIA and Alo Yoga (who branched out into more than one channel, from webpage to instagram, youtube and pinterest).
What I found out is that there isn’t a lot of work-from-home/sedentary users oriented products, this opened a new window for me, so I decided to deep a little further into the users pains and figure out what their problems were.
A study was conducted with over 50 people, who were asked about their activity habits in the last few months where they have been in lockdown, and the physical and mental impact that working from home has had on them.
The study revealed that basically, the 96% of users had been working over 8hrs per day, without a defined boundary between their personal time and their working hours.
Most of them found themselves spending all of their time on a chair, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same place, and limiting their physical activity to chores.
They had tried to include a few activities here and there, but because of the irregular schedule they found it difficult to stick to a routine, which made them feel unmotivated and gave up. It was also complicated for some of them to engage in exercise routines from home, since they didn’t really have any equipment or tools.
As for the physical issues they’ve encountered since lockdown, the most common included severe back pain, headaches, body stiffness, sleeping trouble, weight gain and eyestrain. The mental consequences included depression and anxiety.
To have a better understanding of the problem, I decided to make a user journey that allowed me to compare the same working day, one at the ofice before the pandemic, and one working from home. I found this exercise to be extremely useful because it showed me where the exact pain points were and how the activity rate had dropped.
The journey mapped a low/moderate activity user, before the pandemic we could see his activity level included some high points the user defined as walking to and back from work, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, occasional running and classes at the local gym, etc.
During lockdown, the activity level was limited to walking the dog and taking out the trash.
Defining the problem statement
After analyzing all the data, I came up with the question:
How can I make the user more conscious about the time he spends working and how he does it, in a way that he becomes more self-aware of his posture and includes time for breaks during his routine, so he can be more active during the working hours and improves the physical issues he’s encountering since doing home office?
The solution
I decided to develop a solution that helped the user to remember and include a few moments during his routine to take care of his posture and engage in some activity that allows him to spend the rest of his working day in a much more comfortable way.
More specifically, I developed a desktop app that the user could download to his computer and would only be visible in the task bar at the top.
This decision was made due to the testimonies I got during my research, where most of the interviewed users said that they didn’t really paid attention to their phone while working (sometimes they even left it on another room), they only focused on the computer screen.
Before working on the UI for the desktop app, I created a moodboard to help me set the message I wanted my product to send.
While working on the prototype, I decided to make it easy to use. The user would download the app without the need to create an account and log in, a Preferences menu would display so they could set up their working schedule, include a meal time and allow voice notifications.
The desktop notifications would pop up randomly during the day to remind them to sit straight and take a break. This breaks would include a guided stretching routine and some quick exercises to relax the body and diminish back pain and other issues.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed this week’s challenge, it felt like a more realistic project, like the kind of things I would wish to be doing after the bootcamp. I was proud of how I managed to apply everything that I’ve learned and use it to deliver a more complete research.