MINDR.
Our class was assigned a project to create a responsive website.
Upon picking the topic, “health” out of a hat, my mind began doing its thing again, running to millions of different spaces of health.
To be honest, this is something that was extremely intriguing for me because I currently deal with anxiety. Anxiety to me is the loss of appetite, vomiting, loss of breath, shaking, and hysteria. When I find myself going through a dark time, I either would workout or watch SNL (funny skits) on YouTube, which transports me to a lighter place.
We began exploring all the different aspects of health. From physical activity, social behaviors, nutrition, etc. The team found addiction and mental health very interesting and started exploring what that meant.
Following the topic map, we each dug up some dirt on the mental health space. We did our research and began constructing a screener survey. The findings were quite interesting.
92.59% of our survey takers were stressed sometimes, usually, and always.
The stressors are typically due to work, school, and finances.
The stress relievers were physical activity, social activity, and listening to music.
We then conducted interviews (4), these were are findings:
DISTRACTIONS
Distractions help users take a break from their stress. Though they do not solve the cause of users’ stress, distractions help them improve their mood and refocus on the issue at hand.
QUICK
Users recognize that it’s important to take time to deal with stress, but they don’t want it to take too much time away from what they need to accomplish.
EASY
All users go to either Youtube and Instagram for quick distractions when they need to de-stress, as the photos/videos are funny, light-hearted, and “pointless.”
MOOD-LIFTING
When stressed, users like to view videos/images that make them feel better. These are usually cute animals, funny jokes, or videos of people that emanate the feeling of human presence.
We wanted to create a way for “Peggy” to de-stress quickly, because she has a lot to do, and not enough time.
We began thinking: what do we need to create to help Peggy solve her problem?
Let’s create a responsive website that aggregates content from familiar sources such as YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and create a timed experience so the user doesn’t go down a spiral.
We then conducted a design studio, this was by far the coolest activity I have ever done. Each member draws out their idea, three paper prototypes. We then give feedback to each members’ ideas. We did this about four times (took a while) and finally, all of our drawings overlapped.
Following the studio, we took the designs to sketch and began our mid-fi prototype. After usability testing, we created our high(er)-fi.
The website has content to help relieve stress, both distractions to help “give your mind a rest” and exercises to relieve stress, “give my mind a workout.” All the content will be based on the user’s preferences. The user can share the content along with the option to save images and videos. The whole concept for this website is to monitor the amount of time spent on watching videos or viewing pictures. Essentially, we don’t want the user to be more stressed when they see they have spent hours on the web, instead we value the break that you are giving yourself and want to help save time by curating content and installing a timer.
All in all, it was extremely enjoyable to create something you really believe in, would use, and develop something from start to finish (well, almost).
