The engineers of the future will be poets

Maslo User Research

“Jo, can you co-facilitate a story-telling group at 11am today?” asked my supervisor at the Dementia facility for the geriatric population. I was excited and curious to see how individuals with memory loss, and Aphasia were going to tell stories. From an academic standpoint, story-telling was not something that had tons of scientific research as evidence on the impact it had. From the standpoint of a mental health professional, this was an intervention that was constantly talked about in the geriatric setting. There was conjecture that no form of therapy worked better than Art Therapy and story-telling with this specific population. The process of how the story was created was beautiful to observe.

Each story-telling group accommodated 8 members from the facility. They were shown a picture and each member would say what they were seeing. The facilitator would ask questions to guide the story and provide some assistance, but the output was one beautiful story created together by individuals that suffered a neurodegenerative disease. There wasn’t a more beautiful feeling than seeing that. That to me was — success. Those stories helped them feel accomplished, enhanced their moods, and my hypothesis is it will stall the Aphasia that comes with Dementia. These are things that they could not achieve by medication.

As humans, we communicate and share our experiences through art, story-telling, poetry, theatre, among other things. These are things that help you create and build narratives about your own self- how you talk about yourself with others, you become that.

Maslo helps you break out of unpleasant narratives that you build for yourself and pushes you to reflect and think deeper, while being there for users consistently. That is Empathy- “consistent thereness,” as Russell puts it. Think of Maslo as an infant that you can mould, and will grow alongside its users.

Why stories matter? How does story-telling make us more human? Does story-telling transcend technology?

User Research

The goal of this research was to understand what the users motivations to journal are, identify any pain points, evaluate whether users are able to complete specific tasks successfully, and suggest actionable insights.

User Interviews

To gain a deeper understanding of Maslo’s product design, and peoples’ journaling behaviors, I needed to understand how they expressed their feelings, how did they reflect on their past experiences, and whether it was important for them to reflect, how they dealt with unpleasant situations, were some of many interests I had going in. From these user interviews, I gleaned common behavioral patterns and themes that can be studied and help in creating personas and user stories.

I conducted individual user interviews either over video chat or in person. I prepared questions to serve as a loose guideline on the sorts of topics and questions I would go over which informed me of where in their lives journaling plays a role, and what their motivations are with journaling.

Pre-screening questions:

• Age? Gender? Occupation?
• Do you have a smart phone?
• Do you journal? If yes, how frequently?

These were some questions that helped me recruit my participants. The participants were all in their mid-20’s to mid-30’s with 50% coming from non-tech fields. They all seemed proficient in technology and claimed to be avid users of their smart phones. All the participants enjoy and see value in journaling.

The following is a guideline I used to conduct the user interview:

Session Overview

The sessions will be moderated in-person or through video call. The sessions will be conducted as individual interviews and will each last up to 45–60 minutes.

Introduction:

Hi! Good morning. Thank you for taking the time to be with me today. My name is Jo, and I’m a UX Researcher. In my role I like to understand how people use their phones, what are things they like/dislike, etc. Our conversation will take around 45-60 minutes. The purpose of our conversation today is to improve the user experience for a voice journal app, Maslo.

As I interview you, I’d like to let you know that there are no wrong or right answers, so please don’t feel pressured. None of the questions or activities are designed to test you in any way. Please, don’t feel obligated to hold back any thoughts, your most honest opinion will be appreciated.

Before we start I’d like to ask for your permission of recording this interview.

This will serve for more detailed note-taking after the interview is over. Do you have any questions for us before we get started?

Interview (20 minutes)

Part 1 — Warm-up:

Initial questions to understand the participant and their background

1. Tell me what your day looks like (job, lifestyle, hobbies, etc)
2. On an average day when do you first start using technology? (try to understand their relationship w/ technology)
3. Tell me about your self-care routines
4. Does any of the self-care practice involve journaling? How often?
5. Tell me about the last time you journaled
6. What was the biggest problem in that process? what was the hardest part about journaling?
7. Did you have to come up with any work-arounds for this? (alternative solutions. As a researcher it tells you they’re open to new solutions
8. Are you aware of Apps that allow you to journal? (paid? how did you learn about the app? How long have you been using them?)
9. Why do you use (insert app name here)What do you like about it? Is there anything you dislike about this app?

Common Trends:

• All of the participants check their phones within an hour of waking up in the morning, and are very active users of technology throughout the day
• They all understand the importance of self-care, and all 4 users journal as part of their self-care routine. 2 users journal regularly (>2–3 times a week), 1 user journals as and when they feel like (last time journaled 2 weeks ago), 1 user journals every Sunday
• Most of the users liked having something tangible like their voice journal recording they can go back to from time to time for self-reflection
• Majority of users thought it was safer to journal on their smart phone as opposed to in a physical journal (fear of someone finding their journal book), although 2 users said they preferred the feeling of writing in a physical journal even though it is sometimes inconvenient to carry it around
• Most users mentioned using the Notes App on their phones to write their thoughts down

Themes that stood out:

• Mental well-being: Journaling has for decades been researched in the field of mental health and has constantly showed positive impact. All users reported that in their past experiences, journaling helped them relieve stress, or anxiety.
• Reflections: Most users believed that reflecting on ones’ past experiences not just informs them of what they do in certain situations, it helps one identify patterns in behavior and reduce impulsiveness

Part 2 — Introduce Maslo (2 minutes)

For the second part, we’re going to do some tasks. For these tasks, we will go to the Maslo app. Once you create an account and login, you will be asked to pick 1–3 qualities to focus on. Based on your focus, there will be prompts that you can answer. You are also allowed to change or skip the prompt. If something doesn’t work like you expect it to, just tell me where you would look or what you would press to do the tasks. If the app gets stuck, or something goes wrong with the software, it’s not your fault.

As you’re doing the tasks, I’m going to ask you think out loud — tell me what you’re seeing and thinking. [Show them an example using your phone.] If you get quiet, I’ll just ask you to please keep talking. Does that make sense?

Part 3 — Tasks (20 minutes)

If at any point, you feel that you can’t complete a task with the app, just say “I think I’m done” and we’ll move on to the next task. Sound ok?

Get Oriented

1. First, take a minute to look around and get oriented. As you do this, please think aloud and tell me what you’re seeing and thinking. Give me your general impressions of this app. what do you think it is?
2. What tasks can it help you do? Why?
3. Is there anything else you expected to see or do that isn’t here?
4. Why do you think someone would use this product? what audience is this product aimed at based on the landing page?
5. Do you see yourself using this product?
6. How would you know that you can trust this product?
7. How do you think Maslo is going to help you?
8. Was there anything surprising about the product?
9. Was there something you expected to happen that didn’t happen?
10. Would you use this product today? what would you hope to get out of it?
11. What would stop someone from using it?

First impressions of landing page:

Most users said the design was very simple, and intriguing where they would be curious about what Maslo has to offer. Half of the users said the landing page looked like it was related to “Space” because of the color and the animation. They also preferred the minimalistic design of the app where other elements are not competing for the users’ attention. Some words that were used to describe first general impressions were, “simple,” “calming,” “intellectual,” “curious.” All the users said that this product seems like it targets “millennials.”

After exploring Maslo for a couple of minutes, all the users said they were very curious about Maslo, and would be interested in using it regularly. Their motivations for journaling varied from being able to relieve stress to just doing it as part of their self-care routine. They mentioned “convenience” since it is on their phone that they carry everywhere. Some users mentioned hoping to build a journaling habit via Maslo.

Scenario: Recording a journal

Now I’m going to give you a scenario and ask you to do some tasks. Let’s say you had a stressful day, and would like to clear your mind and focus better:

1. How you would you do that as quick as possible using Maslo?
2. Is the method you used efficient or is there an easier way?

Some pain points were discovered during this process. It took some users more than 1 try to hit the big circle to begin recording, but eventually in 2 tries they were able to press the circle without any assistance. 1 user tried to swipe up, and explained that the small ^ arrow above the prompt confused them, leading them to swipe up. The impact of the problems faced were low (non-critical error) with moderate frequency (25%).

Despite the pain points, the completion rate of the task was 100% without any critical errors. A critical error is defined as an error that results in an incorrect or incomplete outcome. In other words, the completion rate represents the percentage of participants who, when they are finished with the specified task, have an output that is correct.

Part 4 — Wrap-up Interview (5 minutes)

1. Is the app easy to use?
2. Without giving you directions, would you use this app on your own?
3. Were there too many prompts to choose from? What did you think of the organization of the various elements on the app?
4. What do you think of the overall app?
5. How well did the app meet your needs?
6. Was there anything you would have liked to have seen that was missing?
7. Was anything confusing?
8. What could have been better?
9. Any final thoughts or questions?

Thank you again for your time today. Your thoughts and opinions will be really helpful to us as we continue to work on this project.

Based on the interviews, and learning about the users’ motivations and goals, the following actionable insights will help the next design direction.

Actionable insights:

• Some of the themes that came up with having a timer for each prompt was that the users felt “pressured” and were cutting short on their stories.

Recommendation : Consider giving users more ranges in time, for ex., let the user pick if they want to talk for 1 minute, or 2–3 minutes, or a maximum of 5 minutes.

• While the prompts provide direction and topic to talk about, some users wanted more of the general prompts like “what’s on your mind?” to express whatever is going on in their daily life before moving on to more focused prompts
• Build a community like a guided journaling club, which is a safe space to express and reflect on their day or week with other users they choose. 1 user said, “it would be nice to be able to share my recording with my therapist.”

Recommendation : From a business standpoint, creating a platform to connect with others could potentially build a strong sense of community resulting in increased user retention

• As a user, while the “shuffle” sign to change the prompt or tapping the big white circle to record were instinctive to me, some users would have liked more direction in that.

Recommendation : Consider labels like “tap” on the big circle to direct them toward the recording to give users more clarity in navigating the app

• Create an engaging onboarding experience with a quick tutorial on the steps, and provide information on the benefits of journaling

Next Steps:

My next steps would be to dive deeper into specific use cases, introduce Maslo to 8 users, and conduct a diary study to understand user needs, pain points, and quick wins. Additionally, conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis can also give us more information on unmet needs of users.

Get Maslo on the app store.