UX Case Study: Wellness
I’m always seeking to get more knowledge, to improve what I know and get better at things that aren’t really my strengths. I’ve been working as UX/UI Design Teacher Assistant at Ironhack and being able to help new students to understand the design thinking and UX Design process has been a really gratifying experience. Students are given challenges so they can come up with solutions using the Design Thinking process they’ve seen on classes. But as a person that is always seeking improvements and can’t stand still, I also decided to start my own little challenge.
The briefing was about a wellness company that wanted to come up with a digital solution them, since it’s something that’s been growing lately due to the rise of technologic devices. They contacted UX Designers to help them think of something that could help their clients to get a better life style through the application or website.
The process
As the briefing was given the UX process starts on getting to know what problem you’re going to target since it was a really broad briefing. It could be anything on the wellness field, so what is better than a survey to gather data and understand what are the needs of your target? That’s step 1: Empathize. At first what came straight up to my mind was physical activities, so I focused my first online and quantitative survey on that matter. Why do they do it? What are the obstacles that avoid them keeping up with an active routine? That can be a really difficult thing to do since we question what are the right answers we should do? Do I really need to ask this? Am I getting significant data out of this that will help me find a problem to solve? I’ve been through those questions and insecurities myself, but once I visualised what I needed to know, the questions came. I focused on my goal and what I wanted to know within the wellness matter. Learn about your public, who are they, what they do, their characteristics.
In the first online survey that was run it was found really interesting information. One is that people usually go to they physical activities for wellness, physical health, life quality and aesthetic. The other questions were only to understand their routine but one thing highlighted from the others. When asked what got on their way to keep their fitness routine one answered “my period”. I found it really interesting and decided to go deeper in that problem. Another online survey was made, but this time focused on women and their period. Now the project was starting to feel it could point out to a problem.
After highlighting this unique problem a second survey should be run, but this time targeting women and their menstrual cycle. What was seen this time is that most of the answers led to women taking easy on their exercise routine or even giving up on it, not going to their activities at all. Those points were take in consideration and once the survey was done, it was time to go to the qualitative interviews.
During the interviews it was notice two kind of women profile: the ones that would get used to their period, adapt to situations and its negative symptoms and wouldn’t let it interfere on their routine. On the other hand there were the ones that had a really rough time dealing with their period and all the negative symptoms.
The problem that needed to be tackled was to bring a better relationship between women and their body in the menstrual cycle so they could keep their productivity and diminish their frustrations.
The affinity diagram was made to gather all the data, information, insights, habits from the survey and interviews. Once it is done, all the similar information will be gathered into clusters and each cluster will have a title to help the visualisation of patterns.
After having your clusters and naming each one, making a brainstorm is always good to write as many ideas as possible related to one of the clusters and come up with good and different insights and things that weren’t mentioned before.
The mind map was built to organize everything done previously on Affininty Diagram and Brainstorm, creating ramifications around the main theme of the project problem. Here you can see three different groups: one that can take the best out of the solution, which is the group of women that have a rough time and relationship with their menstrual cycle, a second group that could use the solution for a better life style with less medication and the third group which is not affected by their menstrual symptoms so they don’t need any problem solving.
For hypotesis validation the Lean UX Canvas is a great tool where you can visualize better the opportunities, pain points, solutions and problems regarding the whole project.
To get to know the persona better, an empathy map was created and that also helps to understand more about your target. Every input is based on the previous research and analysis done.
From the online surveys, the interviews, data analysis and interpretation, two personas came to life. At this point we are in step 2: Define.
Ana was chosen as the main persona of this project since the main goal is to deliver a better relationship between the woman and their body and well being. The second persona would fit perfectly for a goal of seeking a better life style without so many pills to control the menstrual symptoms.
After creating the persona I decided to run another online survey because I felt I was making up some information. It’s natural that in the process you feel this way, that happens to anyone! So don’t worry, you can always go back a few steps on the process to confirm your hypothesis or doubts!
Storyboards here were created to tell how the routine of the persona really is, what are their painpoints and other details about the persona’s routine. You can use them to help you get more detailed information and insights!
Design thinking process is never linear, you’ll end up coming and going phases really often, it’s a never ending process even after presenting the final product. You can always iterate and make it better.
Below you can see both persona’s user journeys. The first one’s are always the real journey the persona is having right now without the solution and the second ones are the journey with the solution applied and how it solves the user’s pain points and turn them into good experiences.
Ideation, third step, comes after all the research and info analysis to make everything learned about the target into a concrete solution. You can use several techniques to help you with the ideation process of your solution, for this project I used Crazy 8’s to make some ideas and come up with various different approaches, just like a brainstorm.
The problem statement was created to set the main problem and why this problem needs to be solved. All of that based on the researches and analysis made during the process until now. It helps you to stay focused and don’t lose your main goal of your solution. In this project the problem statement was:
The young adult, busy student needs a healthier and an efficient way to deal with the menstrual symptoms because they tend to only solve their lack of comfortability during their period with medication and their performance is highly affected making them skip some of their daily activities.
User stories was used to define functionalities and needs the user might have while using the application. Below are some user stories concerning the app solution. You can come up with as many as user stories as you want. The more you make, the more detailed your project gets.
As a young, busy woman student I want to have access to information about alternatives to ease my menstrual symptoms so I can get a healthier alternative and don’t rely on medicine
As a young, busy woman student I want to feel comfortable during my period so I can have the same performance of when I’m not on my period.
As a young, busy woman student I want to keep doing my physical activities even on my period so I can keep my healthy routine without letting my period get in the way.
Afterwards, feature prioritisation was decided using the Moscow Matrix to align everything that is important to have in the solution at first place.
A site map was also created to map all the screens and functionalities inside the solution.
The user flow was based on a logged in user and a user that made it through as a guest. The main flow is to find an exercise that will help with a certain menstrual symptom and execute it, leaving afterwards a feedback of how you felt after the exercise.
Below is the low-fidelity wireframe of the solution, it contains the main flow and task the user needs to do. Right now tests are being done so I can iterate the process and make improvements before going to the mid/high-fidelity prototype.
Here is the end of the UX process of my personal challenge and soon I’ll be posting the continuation of the study with the UI case of this project. Until now one test was already made on the low-fi prototype so at this point the project already when through one iteration and already been modified to improve the experience. You may notice that also I’ll be constantly updating the pictures in this post due to iteration along the whole process!
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed doing the whole process, learning new things and improving what I already knew! I decided to make a step-by-step case study since I come across students and friends that have some trouble at visualising how the process works, so I wanted to make it more understandable by describing each part of the process I went through. I hope I can help others in the same situation with this Medium post! Moving on to the UI process, you’ll see the solution finally getting it’s concrete shape and identity with style guides, a high fidelity prototype and animations! I’ll be making a Case study post for that part real soon, so keep checking back!
