Life Balancer Chronology
Design Decisions
Some people have a longer life span than others, this made me think what is the reason and cause behind longevity, then I did some research and found out that body energy plays a decisive role in the health of a person and therefore irrefutably influences the life span. Designs have the ability to bring forth comforts of many kinds through sophisticated usability, so I decided to make an application that could help the user to more properly make use of energy, with the broader aim of strengthening overall health. By interviewing many people and closely knowing their styles of life I realized many design opportunities to implement the intended health strengthening system.
User Solutions
After the interviews I came up with two insights to start designing the app: thoughtless schedules and lack of information. Usually a schedule is done without too much regard of energy usage consequences — how much energy we’d spend and how the overall circumstance might affect our health — nevertheless the intention is not to force a person to schedule under the fear of making a wrong move and loss valuable energy rather it is to let the person freely schedule and provide enough advices and solutions to harmonize a bad schedule. When we do something incorrect that may jeopardize our health, for example, sleeping too late, is because we lack relevant information that can tell us the cons of such actions. One more function of this app is to alert the users when they can’t restrain from a action that might compromise the proper preservation of energy.
Designing the Application
When designing the phone application I had in mind both usability and aesthetic, I actually emphasized first on the aesthetic aspect of the application because the look of a software is the first thing the user contacts with, and if it is intended for prolonged use it cannot have an unpleasant appearance, the colors and the elements had to be acceptable and comfortable. When implementing the functions I highlighted clarity and practicability leaving in the process enough white space and deleting as much clutter as possible. To make sure the application was going the intended direction I often reviewed the work process from the perspective of the users: how best and fastest you can achieve a taks without confusions.
Feedback and Evolution
The design went alongside continuous user testing so I had a lot of chances in updating the user interface and making the functions easier and more comfortable to interact with. Feedback from user testing is valuable in application design, one or two persons might find many bugs but that’s not enough to spot all the problems to make the application fully functional, user testing is useful and has to be continuous to reach the desired effectiveness. Feedback and evolution of an application design really go hand in hand. Through the many weeks of constant update and remodel I think I have finally directed the design to a satisfactory outcome where the user can feel comfort with the interaction while preserving energies to strengthen health.
