Wellness Project (Rising Sun)
- Danny Pineda
- Jan 27, 2019
- 12 min read
Updated: Jan 30, 2019
In the Bloombox project for Ironhack, we covered the foundation of User Research and User Interface (UX/UI), which is the Design Thinking process. The Design Thinking methodology evolved from User Center Design (UXD) and works in conjunction with other design methodologies. One which resonates often with UX/UI designers is the User Experience Design (UXD). UX/UI is a user-centric approach, the UX portion focuses on how it works and how people interact with it, the UI portion, on the other hand, concentrates on the look, feel and the layout.
For a more detailed explanation of the design thinking methodology please read “An Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide”.
Wellness Project
The Wellness Project was our first introduction to being a team of one and incorporate methodologies and processes from the Bloombox project. Our contract with Bloombox had ended and a couple of days later, I was hired by the National Wellness Institute to create a wellness application. Health and wellness apps exist in exponential numbers and flood the iOS and Android application markets. This is due to increasing numbers of smartphones and people trying to live a healthier lifestyle.
“In 2018 the number of smartphone users was expected to reach over 50 percent and in five years it is estimated to grow one billion in a span of 5 years thus reaching an expected amount 2.7 billion users worldwide by 2019 (Statistica, 2018)”. These statistics highlight the evolution of technology and how technological evolution speeds up at an exponential pace, making it much more important to keep up with technology or become obsolete.
Our Client: Institute of Wellness
“The National Wellness Institute is 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(Nationalwellness.org, 2018)”.
The NWI provides an array of services for wellness professionals wanting to obtain both certifications and training. NWI's website offers quality resources, research on new innovative practices and educational techniques in the area of wellness and health.
The Problem
About two years ago, CEO Fred Leafgren hired Gallup management consulting company to collect statistical data to grasp the impact of the rapid evolution of technology in the area of health and wellness. The statistical data was presented in a board meeting and the results were shocking. From 2017 to 2019 NWI has seen a substantial drop in memberships due to the increasing preference of users using smartphones instead of personal computers. With smartphones becoming faster and cheaper and almost obtaining 50% of the market shares Vs. Computers. It’s time to focus on the smartphone market and entice new users and maintain current users with applications focused on their health and wellness needs.
Midori Group
With the statistical data analyzed and the problem known. CEO Fred Leafgren hired the Midori Group to:
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 Midori group is a fictitious UX/UI company created by me to show my work for this project and other projects at Ironhack.
A meeting was set up between CEO and Fred Leafgren to discuss which area of health and wellness he would like Midori Group to focus on.
Project Overview
Health and wellness is a broad field with many possibilities but for this project we will follow the process of researching, designing and prototyping to create a working high fidelity prototype of an iOS stress and depression management app. The iOS app will provide the function to create a new profile or log in as an existing user and from there it will follow a flow that will allow the user to interact with the application and perform their intended task.
User Center Design and Research
One of the main goals of designing is understanding who you’re designing for and many techniques are used to accomplish that goal. Research plays a key role in understanding the needs, goals, and motivations of the user. Using Research ensures that you are solving a problem that actually exists in peoples lives and allows you to understand the big picture. User Center Design is an iterative process that will continue to be in play throughout the whole length of the project.
A big percentage of research happens at the beginning of a project and continues in small doses throughout the rest project. There are many combinations of tools and methods that are used to gather raw data. Some of those tools and methods include interviews, focus groups, and qualitative and quantitative surveys. Once the raw data has been collected, it enters the data analysis stage, where trends are identified and a consensus is formed.
Market Research VS UX Research
One key difference between Market Research and UX Research is the sample size of people you are surveying. A large sample size of data doesn’t need to be collected for UX Research to obtain insight into how people use a product and what people do with the product. Compared to Market Research, Market Research welcomes a large sample size to understand what people buy and say. Less is better in this scenario since it provides deep and focused insight for UX Research.
Stress and Depression Management Research
According to the American Phycological Association, American Institute of stress these are the top causes of stress in the U.S. are:
Stress is an increasing problem in the United States of America and each year and manifests itself physically, physiologically or biochemically in the human body.
Empathize
We have already seen some research that was conducted by the American Psychological Association, American Institute of stress, but in-house, we have also started the process of conducting research about Stress and how it leads to depression. A large percentage of the research is conducted in the empathize phase of the design thinking process. I was able to conduct quantitative and qualitative surveys to better understand the impact of stress on an individual. Both surveys are still live and anyone is welcome to take the survey or just take a look at the results. To generate surveys faster I used Chris Thelwell’s Lean Survey Canvas. The Lean Survey Canvas allowed me to focus on the insights that were needed to validate my hypotheses and create concise survey questions.
Analyzing the quantitative survey data
There was one response from the 8 questions that were asked in the survey that stood out from the rest. That question was “What is your coping mechanism for depression?”.
Out of the 25 responses that were received from the survey, avoidance was the number one coping mechanism for people dealing with depression. Other top answers within the survey included:
What caused your depression? Relationships with 64%
What was the longest period of time that you felt depressed? 1 to 6 months with 52%
Did being depressed impair you from performing daily functions? 64%
What personally helped you deal with depression? Working out with 58.3%
What would be your preferred method of communicating? Face to Face with 76%
Performing this type of surveys has provided us with valuable information about how individuals cope with depression originated from stress, a window of how long they dealt with depression, how it was managed and a preferred method of communication.
Organization
Being able to keep yourself organized and cataloging ideas and data is very important for User Research (UX) and User Interface (UI) since you have several components under User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design and Prototyping happening through different phases of a project. To maintain control of the deliverables for this project, I used Trello also known as Affinity map to keep myself organized throughout every phase. The other function for the affinity map is organizing your data that was obtained from the research. Ideas, opinions, issues and any other type of data is organized based on their relationships within the Affinity map.
Interviews
With quantitative research, we were able to obtain results of “What people do” and now we move on into understanding “How people think”. Understanding how people think can be accomplished with the assistance of qualitative surveys, discovery interviews, and usability interviews.
Interviews are performed with stockholders, subject matter experts (SME’s) and users to find pain points and opportunities. The Who, What, When, Why and How format serves as an outline for qualitative surveys. When conducting an interview there are a few things to keep in mind and those are:
Explain your purpose
Create small talk and ask easy questions
Don’t be too formal
Focus on pain points
Let the interviewee lead
Be engaged
Ask open-ended questions
Have a guide ready but don’t be afraid to improvise
Ask follow up questions
And always ask WHY?
The more detailed the answer the more beneficial it will be in helping to identify pain points and opportunities.
Lean UX Principles
Lean UX principles will continually be on display through the project. Projects are going to be approached almost exactly in the same manner. first by performing research, understanding users, analyzing data and drawing paper sketches. It is recommended to use UX methods and tools in between to help you test your hypothesis, build prototypes and test. The whole process is broken into smaller chunks or done incrementally plus the process is iterative.
Lean UX Steps:
Declare assumptions
Create an MVP
Run an experiment (user test)
Feedback & research
Revise assumptions, declare new assumptions, and repeat.
Define
Lines begin to blur between phases towards the end of each one as you begin to transition from one to the other. In the define phase, we begin to “process and synthesize the findings in order to form a user point of view that you will address (Ironhack, 2018)”. With interviews and data collected, we should have a better understanding of what type of user we are designing for by synthesizing research into actionable information.
Brainstorming
Mind mapping is a non-linear tool used during a brainstorming session, where you concentrate on the main topic, which is located at the center and you begin to branch out to other ideas. Mindmaps encourage idea generation by either writing or drawing the idea on a piece of paper or you can even use XMind mapping software to map your ideas. I was able to understand what happens when stress converts into depression. Mind mapping helped me understand the cause and effect of stress and how to it can be minimized. The ideas collected from the mindmap are then organized into related groups on the affinity diagram.
User Personas
“Personas are composite archetypes based on behavior patterns uncovered during the course of our research, which we formalize for the purpose of informing the product design (Ironhack, 2019)”.
“Personas are composite archetypes based on behavior patterns uncovered during the course of our research, which we formalize for the purpose of informing the product design (Ironhack, 2019)”.
In User Research, we build these composite archetypes to know exactly who we are designing for. Research has led me to create the embodiment of our ideal user type named “Stressed Rachel”. Stressed Rachel is the non-generic persona that will create a psychological effect of knowing who you are designing for even though it’s a fictitious persona. Making that connection and realizing the group of people that you are targeting instead of focusing on everyone is an advantage because different users have different behaviors and goals.
Empathy Map
Empathy map was created by Dave Gray and has become a part of the User Center Design. The purpose of this framework is to assist the designer in developing empathy and understanding your users. This is accomplished by placing yourself in the user’s shoes after analyzing your research and writing down your understanding of how they think, feel, hear, see, say and do. Pain points and gain/goals are written down and then the empathy map is tested to make sure they represent your targeted user group.
User Journey
Empathy goes beyond understanding how a user how thinks, feels, hears, sees, says and does. It enters the realm of how the user spends their daily lives or their “user journey”. A User Journey map provides visualization of areas of opportunity where a user might interact with your application through their day. Take for example Rachel’s Morgan day after her fiance terminated their engagement. Her normal routine is no longer a normal routine as she struggles through the day because she feels down. Those low points would be opportunities for her to seek help from a professional or perform an activity that would change her mood.
Interacting with an application where she could speak directly to a professional would be ideal since communication plays a key role in helping those going through a rough time. Also encouraging the user to keep being active and not changing their routines would help a user deal with stress.
To recap user journeys offer a visualization of a user’s daily journey in which areas of opportunities or pain points can be highlighted, thus providing insight to where a user comes into contact with products, services or ecosystems.
Ideate
“Now that we have Defined the problem and have a clear idea of who our users are (their frustration, goals, and motivations), we will use a series of tools and exercises that will help us generate ideas on how to design a product that will help users accomplish their goals (Ironhack, 2018)”.
In the Define phase of the Design Thinking process, we were able to generate ideas quickly by conducting a brainstorming session by creating a Mindmap of ideas. Similar to Mindmaps here are tools and exercises that can be used to quickly “focus on a small part of the problem and explore a specific feature or go broad and think big picture in the Ideation phase (Ironhack, 2018)”. Above we have crazy 8’s, which I have used in the past to rapidly create a solution to a problem and obtain different concepts of the solution from fellow colleagues.
Concept Sketching
Concept sketching is the wisest most cost-efficient, time-saving and quickest way to test a solution without getting emotionally attached. I began ideating my stress management app within the confined of an iPhone 6 template and then began testing my application using the low fidelity sketches. Using a little-known application named Marvel, I was able to take pictures then upload them to the app, created hot-spots to interact with and tested the flow and feel of the application.
Here is a sample of the Marvel app in action for my soccer reservation app.
Advantages of low fidelity prototypes are:
High-level brainstorming and exploration
Working through the problem
Concept testing
Collaboration
After testing your low-fidelity prototypes with users, it’s time to obtain constructive feedback of their experience with your product. Constructive feedback needs to be meet three criteria and those are actionable, specific and kind. Actionable feedback that was received for this project included deleting the screen requiring age, height, and weight of the user since that information could be inputted at a later stage and not on the on-boarding process. Specific feedback was directed at shortening the on-boarding experience and avoid asking personal information from the beginning. Instead, let them provide the information when they are ready. Feedback is not always going to be positive, so don’t let negative feedback get to you.
Obtaining feedback has one purpose and that is to help you improve your product and the more feedback received the better. Eventually, you will start noticing patterns from the feedback that is obtained and use it to make improvements.
Prototyping
With every build of a prototype, testing is needed for validation, and we must continue to analyze and evaluate everything that was done in prior phases and current. Below is a list of everything that has been accomplished up to this point.
Surveys and interviews with results and conclusions
Affinity Diagrams
Brainstorming sessions and mind mapping results
Problem Statements + Personas
Empathy maps of your Personas
User and customer journeys
Story Boards
The results of the ideation exercises
User Stories
Your concept sketches
Concept Testing
Through every version or iteration of your product. concept testing will be taking place. Concept testing has been happening for low fidelity prototypes, mid-fidelity prototypes, and high fidelity. I have been able to perform usability testing consistently with the help of classmates, friends, and family. In usability testing, we are gathering quantitative and qualitative data by observing, listening and taking notes. Concept testing is a cheap and fast approach to identify poor concepts and make necessary changes and improvements.
Flowchart and Sitemap (Information Architecture)
Flowcharts have multiple ways of displaying how you want a task to be accomplished. You can depict a flowchart by focusing on a single flow to complete a specific action or a user flow. User flows don’t take a linear approach and branch out thus providing a more detailed approach to the journey you want the user to encounter. Flowcharts can also be taken to another level by using wireframes and turning those wireframes into Wireflows. Wireflows provide more context on the interactions that are happening within your application or website. Read more about flowcharts on this medium article: UX Glossary: Task Flows, User Flows, Flowcharts, and some new-ish stuff.
Understanding the flow of your application is important right next to knowing how you want to structure the content, this is where sitemaps come into the picture. A sitemap is made up of reference category at the top and is followed by sub-categories. You want to keep the sub-categories under 7 and anything beyond that point needs to be grouped together under another category.
Human Interaction Design
I’ve been focusing almost completely on the User Reseach and haven’t spoken much about User Interface. User Interface has been in full effect through a practiced called Interaction Design (IxD). “ Interaction design borrows theory and technique from traditional design, usability, and engineering disciplines; but it is greater than a sum of its parts, with its own unique methods and practices (Cooper, 1995)”. The interaction between the user and the user interface is what is being tracked through the process of testing.
As a UX/UI Designer, you will ask yourself if the user is enjoying the interface of the application or website? are they having any difficulties? IxD follows 5 principles and those are:
Good Interaction Design is Consistent
Good Interaction Design is Visible
Good Interaction Design is Learnable
Good Interaction Design is Predictable
Good Interaction Design provides Feedback
Things to keep in mind is that “UI Design is about how it works before I touch it and interaction design is about how it works when I touch it (Ironhack, 2019)”.
In the 1980s the term human-computer interaction was introduced and with the advancement of technology this relationship has become even more important for a designer. We can’t any longer just focus on the ergonomic feel of a product, but we must also have an understanding about the colors since color blindness exist. Designing isn’t a linear approach as we consider the different ways a user interacts with a product including colors, hearing, touch and the human memory.
User Interface
In the realm of User Interface, there are many principles, concepts, frameworks and practices of design in effect. User Interface is made up of:
Low fidelity Sketches
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
Interaction Design
Human Interaction Design
Design Principles
UI Design Elements
Design Patterns
Usability Process and Framework
High fidelity Wireframes
Prototyping
Testing
Final Prototype
User Research (UX) and User Interface (UI) slowly intertwined in the beginning stages of a project and became one in the testing phase of the Design Thinking process. Months of research, designing and testing led me to the creation of a stress management app named Rising Sun. Rising Sun is a Health and Wellness application focused on helping users deal with stress via meditation, exercising, yoga, running, and communication. Within the app, you are able to set reminders for when you want to perform a mood changing action or chat with a professional. Users are also able to locate professionals within their area that could help them through their tough times. With that being said this is my final prototype.
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