DOVE | Designing a mobile app to help women with self-esteem.
Research, design studios, ideation, prototyping and usability testing:
Concept project at General Assembly LON.
Project Duration: 2 Weeks | UX/UI Design | Group Project
Team | Eduardo Mattos/ Fiona Tout/ Vandana Bailur/ Vivien Chin
Brief
Dove has identified an opportunity in the market to introduce a health data tracking mobile app to assist users in improving their self-esteem. The digital product should be able to:
- inspire body confidence and self-esteem in its users
- track and monitor health data
- offer the facility to buy Dove products
Background
Dove is a global beauty brand stocked in over 80 countries worldwide supplying the globe with a range of skincare products. In 2004, the company launched their ‘Real Beauty’ campaign. By employing models from a wide age demographic and diverse ethnic backgrounds Dove promoted their ethos of inclusivity, diversity and authenticity. Fourteen years later and the message surrounding this campaign remains uniquely powerful. Following this success, Dove also established their ‘Self Esteem Fund’ which educates and promotes body positivity within families and schools.
These values were at the forefront of the design task as maintaining this brand ethos was key in targeting our users in a meaningful way and developing the company’s existing USP.
Problem
How might a mobile app that tracks health data and improves self-esteem function?
What would be the central experience of the user and bring them added value?
How will this benefit Dove as the client?
These are the questions our project hoped to answer through empathising with the needs of our target user and understanding their motivations, real-life scenarios and pain points regarding their unique self-esteem journeys.
Our Solution
A challenge based mobile app that encourages women to set meaningful, manageable goals with the support of their peers.
Our team’s design incorporated altruistic values — allowing charitable donations in support of women’s refuge upon successful completion. We used third-party health data to track user’s achievements, providing added value to the user’s existing data and strengthening Dove’s brand image.
Research
Research goals
- To understand the current platforms available for tracking health data, explore what apps are currently popular within our target market.
- To empathise with women who want to improve their self-esteem, including the challenges they face, their needs and desires and struggles both offline and via digital platforms.
- Identify market opportunities for a new product to solve these problems through user research and ideation.
Market research — Competitive Analysis
There are many apps on the market that offer the facility to record health data, including those that are tailored especially to women and women’s health. However, there is a gap in the market for apps targeting body confidence and self-esteem as the majority of digital products available are specific to solely fitness or healthcare rather than overall wellbeing.
Below is a selection of apps explored in more detail. We researched their key features, interface design and how they retain high levels of user interaction.
User Research
Following an initial screener survey, we began the process of interviewing our target audience which included 10 women from a variety of cultural backgrounds aged between 18 and 65.
In order to understand what made women feel good, we spoke to them at length about a range of subjects including:
self esteem
happiness
body positivity
The personal nature of these questions led us to intimate insights. Though each woman interviewed had experiences unique to them, our research revealed a common thread amongst the information received including their successes and pain points.
Many of our users had used health-tracking apps at some point and although metrics such as calorie counting were an interesting point of reference true feelings of positivity and well-being were rooted in a balance of the following:
fitness
mental health
achievement
support
Our interviewees valued qualitative data over statistics, equating the holistic balance of emotional state, sociability and healthy body with feelings of self-worth and joy.
“The body is like a machine, it requires constant maintenance to feel good”
Affinity Mapping
We were able to fully synthesise our data by producing an affinity map. Analysing key points from our research in this way meant we could clearly identify further patterns and trends in our research.
A key takeaway from the research was our interviewees' enthusiasm for challenges.
“I love the feeling of getting things done”
‘reaching a target makes me feel empowered’
Almost all interviewees reflected that setting themselves targets, and challenging themselves to undertake new activities lead them to experience a sense of achievement and fulfilment.
Exercise to improve well-being was prominent throughout our findings but meditation, yoga and time spent with friends were also recurrent themes among our interviewees.
Common Issues/ Pain Points
One common issue our users faced was ‘sticking to’ self-prescribed improvement goals. The sense of defeat when a plan didn’t turn out as expected led our interviewees to feel despondent and incur feelings of lowered self-esteem.
Creating a Persona
Using our interview data we synthesised our findings into a key user persona. Maria is a representation of our target user and empathises with our interviewees' struggles regarding self-esteem and goal setting.
Before moving into the ideation stage we re-framed our research into problem statements by considering ‘How might we…’ we were able to frame our ideas and explore potential solutions with more focus.
How might we:
To further refine our design thinking, we continued to reflect upon the persona of Maria. By establishing her mindset we would be able to more accurately meet her needs as a user.
Scenario
It’s Sunday and the beginning of the month, Maria wants to set a new challenge for the month ahead that she is going to stick to
Maria needs a way to challenge herself because she is busy and lacks motivation
Ideation
Crazy 8's
We hosted a design studio session, drawing 8 sketches each to begin documenting new ideas. The collective result of this was 36 potential solutions. As a team, we took it in turns to discuss and asks questions about the concepts before voting on a selection to develop further.
Prototype
Initial Concept: New users would sign up to the app — pledge money in faith of achieving their goal and upon completion, the funds would be transferred to a charity of their choice.
We asked 5 women who have used a health tracking app in the past to test our paper prototype. By completing initial user testing at an early stage, we were able to validate whether or not our initial concept was a success.
Early feedback suggested that people were enthusiastic about the concept and were excited by the idea of goal setting.
However, initial feedback also informed us that:
1. Users found there to be too many steps and too much manual activity when first using the app.
2. Users were reluctant to commit personal funds towards the charitable donation — especially before gaining value from the app
3. There was confusion surrounding how the app operates.
Before moving into mid-fidelity we needed to undertake some key changes.
Concept Iteration
Although users were excited about the idea of helping others through charity, our research showed that users were not so positive about transacting using their own money. With this in mind, we had a conceptual overhaul, returning to a group design studio to reconcile our solution based on the feedback.
The result of this was the idea to introduce ‘gamification’ to the process. Our new design worked using the model that each challenge completed would result in the user receiving a set amount of ‘bubble tokens’ a collectable currency unique to the app.
These reward tokens could be collected and stored on the dashboard. Once the user had collected a substantial amount of ‘bubbles’ these could either be exchanged for either a charitable donation towards a women’s refuge centre OR discount vouchers to be used to purchase Dove items. The more bubbles the higher the donation OR the greater amount you would have to spend on the Dove website.
Incorporating Dove Products
By structuring our app in this way we also offered the opportunity to ‘soft sell’ Dove products. There is a substantial body of research to support the view that our current generation of consumers is excited by “affiliating themselves with brands that align with their own personal value systems”. Over the past few years, influencer marketing has become the favourite over the ‘hard sell’ for exactly this reason.
Following Dove’s Real Beauty campaign — coined as the leading add campaign of the 21st century it was discovered that “the women and men exposed to [the “Campaign for Real Beauty”] became much more interested in buying anything the brand was selling,”
Through using our app, users would be exposed to the Dove brand on a daily basis, keeping the brand and product line in the mind’s eye of the target audience.
Through the award of vouchers, users would also be much more likely to spend funds on Dove products over competitors. Dove’s offering of a charitable donation would also strengthen brand image and act as a beacon for the company ethos and therefore create allegiance with their consumers.
MID FI USER TESTING
ITERATIONS
The iteration below demonstrates the different challenge page layout between concept 1 and 2. In our revised version the number of bubbles you are able to earn for each challenge is clearly documented. There is also a clear link to the community that have already signed up to the task that are there to offer support throughout the process.
Below you can see version 1 and 2 of the charities screen. V.2 incorporates the new process of allowing the user to exchange their tokens for either charity or vouchers.
Another detail we iterated upon was iconography on our navigation. Our user testing demonstrated that the pen and paper symbol to indicate the blog was misleading. Users thought this was a ‘note taking’ facility, rather than a place to read information. By branding the blog with the Dove logo and providing a discreet text signifier, users had a clear understanding of where the navigation would take them.
By including onboarding screens we were also able to quickly deliver the features of Dove Challenges to new users so they could begin to use the app with clear understanding and confidence.
UI DESIGN
Moodboard
Our moodboard helped us to visualise the embodiment of our app and the message we wished to deliver with our imagery. In keeping with Headspace and current design trends, we were drawn to flat illustration. This lends itself well to depicting the female form in a feminine soft way, celebrating the body and curves without falling into stereotypes.
Style Guide
Dove already had existing brand colours so we worked using this minimal palette of blue white and gold within our designs. We introduced slightly brighter tones of blue to attract attention and give the interface an enigmatic feel.
Mock Up Screens
Final Mock Up Screens: Mobile App Designs | Dove Concept Project
USER FEEDBACK
Feedback on our mock-up was very positive. Users saw our prototype as an effective way to improve self-esteem through achievement and were able to set personal goals to help improve the lives of both themselves and others.
From a business perspective, our app communicates Dove’s ethos, strengthens brand image through regular exposure and positive association with a charity.
“The app was clear, really fun and the challenge aspect is great”
“Love the bubbles! They make me feel so happy!”
Next steps for product:
1. Develop the social network within a challenge.
2. Provide users with the opportunity to set their own challenges.
Clickable Prototype
Click the phone below for a link to the prototype.
