WELL + PEACE APP
Mental health that's accessible & customizable to anyone's needs.
While enrolled in Career Foundry's UX / UI course, our task was to concept and create a health and wellness app that allowed health-conscious individuals to log in to a responsive health and wellbeing portal to record their health information and access general physical and mental wellbeing features.
CONTEXT
UX / UI Project
TIMELINE
Spring 2022
TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator
Figma
Marvel
Optimal Sort
CONTRIBUTION
UX/UI
Research
Prototype
User Interview
Defining the Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic and years following that really shed light on mental health and well being. Though years before that I was working on my well being attending yoga classes and doing daily meditations, this became so much more real and needed during this pressing time. I chose this project prompt because mental wellness is important to me. Mental wellness or the word "meditation" can be a very intimidating word to many as well as just trying to find a therapist. I often found apps that did the meditation piece, but what about connecting them to therapists near them?
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Our mental wellness users need a way to record their health and medical information because they wish to better their mental wellbeing. We will know this to be true when we see our users consistently logging their health conditions and setting up times with their therapist.
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping & What We Discovered
Through user interviews with adults ranging from ages 24 to 35 who had used a mental wellness app in the past, we were able to understand how users would go about finding a mindfulness app and how to create better habits.
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Most seeked a mental wellness app during a hard time in their life, i.e. a life changing event, COVID-19 pandemic, or a break up.
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Noted they would be interested in sharing medical information and tracking habits as long as they weren't shared with third parties.
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Interested in an app that introduced mental wellness through meditations and the capability of finding a local therapist.
Defining User Personas
Taking the insights from the research and interviews done above, I came up with four diverse user personas inclusive of those with disabilities, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and ranging ages. This, in turn, would allow others on the project to be sure to design for multiple personas in mind.
Information Architecture
Low to Mid-Fidelity
Usability Testing & Updates
OLD NAV BAR
First round of icons to indicate library, chat, therapist and profile functions.
NEW NAV BAR
Chat and therapist icons too similar and confused user. Updated icons.
OLD VS NEW AUDIO FUNCTION
Initial renderings included varying colors and mismatched icons. Once the design system was established I updated it to feature updated colors schemes, icons and a card material design.
Design System
Key Functions
Search for Local Therapist
What did I learn?
TO BE AWARE OF MY BIASES
Common in the design world, I had to fight my biases and back up my design choices with research and data. I also made sure to exercise any of my research methods with empathy, understanding and a lot of curiosity.
ACCOUNT FOR ALL GROUPS OF PEOPLE & AGES
Although I ensured to have user personas that varied in gender, race and accessibility, during usability I noticed I did not account for age groups as well as I intended. Issues like font size, emoji hold-down responses (that most 20 to 30-year-olds are aware of) and keyboard functions were different for those above 50.
ICONOGRAPHY IS IMPORTANT
My chosen icons for the navigation bar, I thought, were intuitive, but I found through usability tests that many of them could be mistaken for other items, i.e. library icon could indicate journaling in the notebook or the chat bubble could indicate chatting with your therapist. Therefore, I added titles under each to cover both clarity and accessibility standards.
