Case study: how about doing meditation with an App?
Overview
Here comes my 4th project at Ironhack. For this project, we have to help a wellness institute to create an App to help people live a healthier life. As the tool can be focused in any category that relates to personal wellbeing, we chose to create a meditation App in which people can adopt and maintain a routine that enhances their well-being. We are 2 UX/UI Designers and the duration for this project is 2 weeks.
The client
This time we’re working for The National Wellness Institute, it’s an organization founded in 1977 with the mission of providing health promotion and wellness professionals unparalleled resources and services that fuel professional and personal growth.
The company has been very successful over the years and their annual National Wellness Conference has become the most highly acclaimed professional conference in health and wellness.
Even though NWI has numerous years of experience in the wellness field, its program has been slow to catch up with technology. They have seen a substantial drop in memberships and want to find a way to add value to their members. To do this they have decided to focus on two things:
- Create a set of digital wellness tools for Wellness coaches
- Update their image — create a new visual system that reflects their innovative and refreshed approach to wellness.
The project
Despite the vast availability of personal metrics and health apps, people continue to struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
We’re required to conduct user research to understand people’s relationship with mental, physical, and emotional well-being in order to develop a tool that will drive them to action.
We decided to create a Native iOS App which helps people access to meditation easily and be able to follow a daily routine.
UX Process
1. Market research
To begin with, we’ve done a brand analysis on 4 popular meditation Apps on the market. They all have different contents & target groups and this helps us to draw our market positioning chart.
Our meditation App Ease should be innovative but can also let users to practice with goals in order to track their progress.
2. User research
Before conducting the user research, we created this lean survey canvas to get a better idea on building a survey about meditation & wellness.
3. Quantitative data
We got 72 users’ feedbacks from our survey, 50% of them ages between 35–44 years old, and 50% of them rated theirs wellness ‘3’ out of ‘5’ — not good not bad.
While asking about their mental health, the majority of users felt ‘stressed out’ (71.8%) and ‘anxious’ (60.6%).
We then talked about the benefits of meditation, we can see that not many people are aware all of them.
The next one is little bit tricky, we asked if they already use an App to meditate, and the most of users (44.4%) said not yet but are interested in trying.
Our last question focused on the possible feature of the meditation App. 65.7% of users wanted to be able to track their progress and also to have some music (58.2%) and to be a reminder (55.2%).
4. Qualitative data
We then conducted 5 users’ interviews to dig more information. According to their feedbacks we then created this affinity diagram, the identified patterns are: an App with personalised contents, relaxing music & voice, define objectives & track goals and help to release stress. Most of pain points are: I’m very stressed but I don’t have time to meditate, I don’t want to pay for it…
5. User Personas
From the quantitative & qualitative data, we defined 2 user personas. The main persona is Claire, she’s a sales manager in Paris. She’s a stressed-out workaholic and she doesn’t have time to meditate but she wants to start meditation to release stress.
Ken is our secondary persona, he’s a freelance designer lives in Singapore. He’s a wellness advocate and he often works out. His pain point is that he’s not motivated to follow the meditation App daily and also not able to share his progress with his coach and friends.
6. Jobs to be done
We then came up with 3 jobs to be done for Claire & Ken:
- When I feel stressed-out I want to find a quick and efficient way to help me calm down so I can feel much better and released.
- When I can’t concentrate at work I want to practice an activity so that I can retrieve my energy and productivity.
- When I feel that I’m overwhelmed I want to meditate so that I can clear my head, have more clarity and be more focus.
7. Value proposition canvas
According to their different needs & pain points, we then built 2 value proposition canvas for both of them in hoping that our future App will fit their needs.
8. User journey map
We created a user journey map for Claire based on her typical working day: she woke up at 7:30 am with bad sleeping quality and this day she planned to attend a meditation class after work. But when she finally left office it was too late for the class and on her way home she decided to download an App to get started. Before go to bed she landed on the App but found out lost with it and wasn’t sure where and how to start meditation so she deleted it.
9. Problem statement
Stressed-out workaholics need to find a prompt way to improve their wellbeing because they don’t have time to release their stress.
10. MOSCOW method
Next step, we created the basic features of our App Ease.
11. MVP statement
The goal of the Ease app, at the bare minimum, is to make users to get started with meditation and to be able to relax. By knowing how to meditate, the app further aims to encourage users to build a routine to improve their wellness.
12. User flow
UI process
1. Low-fi wireframes
We also conducted 5 concept testings on our low-fi wireframes.
2. Mid-fi wireframes
For the mid-fi wireframes, we also conducted 7 usability testings on 5 UX/UI designers & 2 non-designers. It’s interesting to see that people share many same comments on our mid-fi wireframes and this step really helps us to do modifications before moving on to hi-fi prototypes.
3. Moodboard
4. Brand attributes
5. Colors & typography
6. Style guide
7. Hi-fi prototypes
For the hi-fi, we decided to use a gradient color and some illustrations to communicate a relaxing vibe. On the landing page, user can choose his / her intentions and also to set daily / weekly goals. According to the intentions user picked, there’ll be a recommended program to start the meditation.
After the user finished a session, there’ll be a congratulations message popped out and the user can choose either to continue the session or to see the progress. On the profile page, there’s a dashboard which shows the meditation minutes the user has achieved and also a mood chart shows the changement of user’s mood after meditation. This helps to motivate the users to keep the meditation routine on our App if they can see their mental wellness’s changement. Also, there’s a share button which allows them to share the progress with coach / friends or to publish it on their social medias.
Next steps & take-aways
It’s really interesting to work on a project from a blank sheet and see how the ideas finally come true on a prototype.
For the next steps, we’re going to do a desirability testing on our hi-fi prototypes and make some modifications according to users’ feedbacks. We’ll also add more educational contents & kid’s meditation contents for our App. We’ll also finalise the favoris section.
My biggest take-away for this project is that time management is super important, it’s really helpful to achieve daily goals for delivering project in such a short duration. A good coordination with your team is necessary to keep everybody on the same page and brainstorm for new ideas. Also during the whole process, it’s essential to always put your users first and centric. Remember who are you designing for and don’t design for yourself.
