Project Background
SoulSpace is a well-being habit-tracker app that empowers users to improve their physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health. The app allows users to set goals for various aspects of health, track their progress with an in-app timer, and engage in daily journaling.
UX Designer
Figma, Adobe Fresco, Adobe Illustrator
January 2022 — May 2022
Problem
The COVID-19 Pandemic has negatively impacted the mental health and well-being of millions across the world, as the world was forced to self-isolate. During a time of increased stress, anxiety, and loneliness, the importance of having a healthy lifestyle has increased dramatically over the past couple of years since the outbreak.
The challenge was to design an app that addresses the growing need for a holistic approach to well-being, encouraging users to build and sustain healthy habits.
How-Might-We
How might we create an app that encourages users to build long-term healthy habits?
Design Process
Discover
User Research: AEIOU Heuristic Framework
This heuristic framework is helpful for capturing user research in the form of contextual inquiry. This qualitative research method follows 5 categories:
Activities: What actions and behaviors are people taking to reach their goals?
Environment: What is the overall setting in which the activities are taking place?
Interactions: What are the basic interactions occurring for people to reach their goals?
Objects: What are all the details that form the environment?
Users: Who are the people being observed? What are their personalities like?
Activities
cardio exercise
weightlifting
running
yoga
meditation
journaling
Environment
home
work
school
car
gym
airport
bedroom
Interactions
social media
physician
personal trainer
therapist
health app
Objects
yoga mat
treadmill
free weights
journal
health magazines
apple watch (with health statistics)
Users
Gen X
Millennials
Gen Z
This exercise uncovered user insights such as behavioral patterns and needs of users as they interact in their day-to-day environments. The data I gathered from this exercise helped me in building comprehensive user personas.
Define
User Personas
Ideate
Feature Ideation
Through concept sketching, I created storyboard sketches to define a user's "happy path" while using the app. The happy path (user journey) answers users' pain points and needs as uncovered from the user research phase.
User Journey Actions:
Log In / Sign Up
Onboard
Journal Entry
Homepage
Select Category
Select Activity
Set Goal
Complete Goal
View User Profile
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
After creating storyboard sketches, I moved on to wireframing. I began my first wireframes to align exactly with what I sketched. However, after usability testing and further evaluation, I made note of areas of improvement and continued to iterate my design:
Areas to Improve
Optional Engagement with Journal Entries
When user opens the app and is prompted with a journal prompt and entry, the user may not want to engage in this and may close the app.
Simplify Navigation Bar
The bottom nav-bar has too many icons and they are confusing.
Takeaways
Iterate, iterate, iterate!
I recognized the importance of constant iteration through the wireframing phase of this project. Rapid iteration and testing allows increased user feedback and when issues are detected early on, it is easier to fix them in a timely manner. So, I was able to make many changes and improvements in the early phases of designing because I was constantly iterating.
Design
Brand Development
Ideating Brand Names
When ideating possible brand names, I wanted to reflect a sense of growth, nourishment, self-care, and a healthy mind. With these descriptive adjectives in mind, I began ideating:
Sketching Logo Ideas
logo sketches created with Adobe Fresco and Photoshop
Exploring Color Palettes and Designing The Logo
I explored various color palettes, with the end goal of choosing colors that are welcoming, pleasing, warm, and inviting.
Style Guide
Test
High-Fidelity Mockups
Clickable Prototype
Takeaways
By engaging in an iterative design process, I continuously incorporated user feedback, which helped me refine the interface into a more user-friendly experience. I streamlined navigation and made journaling features more flexible based on user input. This project reinforced the importance of rapid iteration, allowing me to identify potential UX flaws, and resolve those design issues early on.
