This projet was conducted in the scope of my UX/UI design bootcamp and consisted in building a wellness app from scratch. I decided to create a journaling app. Therefore I have researched people’s writing habits, studied the current market and tackled the possibility to create an innovative solution in this area. I worked following the design thinking process in an UX and UI design scope.
Role
Individual project: several roles endorsed from UX researcher to UI designerProject duration
2 weeks in September 2020
Outcome
Research report, User persona & user journey map, Concept creation & iteration, Hi-fi wireframe & prototype
Tool used
Figma
I hope you will enjoy diving into it as much as I enjoyed working on it :)
Investigate
User research
To initiate my project research, I launched a survey among 80 respondents. The results provided me with a big picture of people’s habits & behavior when it comes to journaling: the relationship they have with their journal, the purpose for writing one, the pain points that they can encounter…
Most of the respondents are writing in order to track their lives: in terms of memories & personal growth. A purpose that is difficult for 1/3 of the sample, as they tend to mix their mediums to write. Indeed, this habit leads to a decentralization of personal data (spread across phone’s notes, document in computer & paper journal) and therefore makes it hard and frustrating to track properly one’s life.
Competitor analysis
After completing user research, I conducted competitor analysis of both journaling and mood tracking apps to have an overview of what the market currently offers and of where I could find a consistent spot for my future app.
Journaling apps
The market is pretty saturated, with apps (Day One, Journey Cloud, Grid diary…) offering already a large diversity of features. Among these:
High level of privacy: password to access the app
Multi-medium: Web and mobile apps
Reminders: daily push to remember to write regularly
Personalization: each entry is customizable with photo, location, music, tags, mood, questions to answer
Memories: reminder of past entries
Exportation: possibility to export entries as PDF
However, in spite of all these features, I realized that one of my research insight was not covered by any of the existing app: users have an emotional bond to paper journaling, that a keyboard would never replace. Therefore, I identified here a gap in the market that could be an opportunity for my project and bring relevant value to the user.
Mood tracking apps
As the results of my research showed me that users journal for self development tracking purpose, I thought benchmarking the mood tracking app market could be relevant as well. Once again, the market is pretty saturated with many actors offering a different features:
Feelings: users can pick feelings from a more or less long list
Factors: they can relate this feeling to an activity, an event…
Intensity: they can sometimes assess the intensity of this feeling
Dashboard: a report assess the evolution of feelings throughout time
Across these apps, I realized that they were all based on the same system: the users declare themselves their mood. However, when we rely on what behavioral sciences teach us, there is always a gap between what people say they do and what they actually do (Cf: Thinking Fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman / Predictably irrational by Dan Arieli). Here we can look at these apps with the same reasoning: here people are saying how they feel, but is it so relevant about how they really feel? We can be pretty sure that they report their feelings in a distorted way due to different biases (their ego telling them to boost the level of some emotions, the negativity biais showing them the facts from a very dark point-of-view, not being able to really qualify how they feel…). Therefore, I found another spot on the market to position my future app as innovative: considering the feelings of users from a behavioral perspective.
2. Define
After gathering data about the user and the market, I defined precisely whom my project will target and what pain point it will aim at solving.
As featured above, Elisa is an “advanced” journal writer, her whole writing routine is already well rounded as it is, and she experiences no pain point at this stage. As she is very interested in her mental wellness and her personal growth, her journal experience is also about reading her writing to look at herself. At his stage, two pain points come on her way:
An archive issue: she has so many writing splitted into different mediums (several notebooks and her phone) that the search for information is long
An analysis issue: even though reading herself is a nice moment, after a while it gets a bit long and overwhelming. Pages after pages, she tends to lose herself into details and therefore doesn’t get the full picture she initially came for which is basically: “how happy was I at this time? “Was I stressed? Over which reason?” in order to compare these information to how she feels currently.
These two pain points led me to the following question:
How might we help Elisa to track easily her personal growth throughout all of her writings from different mediums?
3. Ideate
Methodology
To come up with the concept that would answer the question above, I worked following an agile methodology:
In the first place I brainstormed by myself and came up with a first draft of concept.
I tested this concept with a user (with the same profile than Elisa) and gathered her insights in order to iterate the concept, so that in the end of the interview I had a new concept. I did three rounds following this methodology, so that in the end I had a well rounded version of the concept.
Before prototyping, I tested this final concept on 4 more users to make sure it answered their expectancies. I also consulted an engineer to make sure the concept was implementable. And, finally, I checked if the concept was offering an added-value on the existing market. This last step enabled me to fine-tune the concept and make it ready for prototyping.
From the initial draft of concept…
To address the archive issue: I inspired myself from a quote from the survey. “It happens that I transcript what I write in my phone in my journal. This takes sooo long but it is the only way I found to have all of my writings at the same place.” Therefore I thought of an automatic transcript system: Elisa will be able to take a photo of her journal pages then they would be transcripted into text in the app.
To address the analysis issue: I thought of a chatbot communicating with Elise saying “looked how you good you did that day, remember?”, “Last year, at the same day you wrote you felt so bad, look how far you’ve been and how better you feel now!”.
…Going through iterations…
The photo concept turned out to be relevant to the eyes of users. Although, users help me to enrich the idea of data centralization: possibility to add vocal notes, desktop version…
However, the chatbot idea was massively rejected: it was judged too intrusive and was questioned as an efficient way to actually track anything. Here I had to explore with users how they would imagine a tracking featured. Based on the multiple apps users already know the idea that emerged was: a dashboard.
…To the final concept.
The app will be named “V.”, as phonetically it sounds like the French word that means “life” (“vie”).
The app will provide two innovative features not yet offered by the competitors, and approved by a relevant target of users as a solution to the HMW:
The app will be highly secured as the user shares very intimate data on it, that means: 1. No connexion with Google, Facebook or any social media, 2. A charter in which the company commits not to share/sell the data, 3. A password to access the app.
As the innovative features of the app require an advanced level of technology, if the user wants to use it fully, she will have to pay a premium account. A free version will be available but with less advanced features.
Each entry when created will be customizable (with photo, music, location), as all the competitors already do it. It will also be another source of data for the AI system to analyze emotions.
4. Prototype & test
Mood board & Style Tile
The look and feel and UI elements of the app aim at conveying a cosy and discreet atmosphere that could make Elisa feel in a safe and caring space where she would feel comfortable sharing her personal information in full trust.
Wireframes
Wireframe & prototype were built following 2 different user flows in order to stress the 2 added value of the app:
User flow #1 to display the transcription feature
Elisa takes a photo of one of her paper journal leaf to get it transcripted & then reads a previous entry page.
At each stage, I tested the wireframes on potential users. Basically the changes were the following below and I implemented them for the hi-fi:
Add a title below each menu bar icon for more clarity, otherwise users didn’t know what they corresponded to.
Clean out the home page by featuring only one CTA (“Create a new entry”) instead of overwhelming the user from the start with too many options.
Simplify the toolbar in the entry’s text field & add the possibility to modify the entry on the top right corner.
Remove the possibility to filter & organize the entries on the “Latest entries” screen. Indeed if the user wants to access all of her entries (to make a research for instance) she can go in the “Entries” icon in the menu bar, and here she will be able to filter and organize them according to her wish.
2. User flow #2 to display the AI mood tracker
Elisa explores her emotion dashboard & plays with its functionalities & settings.
I tested the wireframes corresponding to this user flow as well. Here the feedbacks were mostly asking for more clarity regarding the data to feature:
On the screen “August 2020”, users wanted to have a visual representation showcasing the proportion of each emotion instead of just a list of emotions. Same for the “Emotions growth” screen, they requested for a graph giving them the big picture of the negative and positive emotions.
To express evolution of an emotion, I initially thought of a calendar grid with one color a day according to the emotions detected. But it turned out not to be relevant enough for users as a graph is very often the preferred option to display a growth. It was important to keep a representation users are acquainted to in order to make the reading the easiest.
On the screen “Joy in August”, I initially thought of a mood board featuring qualitative data such as quotes, photos… But giving an overview on that amount of data made the elements way too small and the users couldn’t see them properly. Therefore I changed it for bigger elements with a carrousel feature.
Next steps & learnings
As this project was highly time sensitive (Only two weeks), it was the occasion for me to learn how to manage timings. I worked in a very iterative way all along this project, going forth and back to the users to ask for their opinion & feelings. This turned out to be highly valuable, and I got passionated about it. However I had to force myself to stop the process sometimes (when I considered that the outcome was good enough), so that I could go for the next steps according to my planning without loosing myself in the iteration funnel (that can actually go on forever!). Obviously, if I had more time, I would have deepened even more the iteration via co-creation with the users.
A next step to take on this project would be to be considered from the development side on how to implement a handwriting transcription & AI system for this purpose. During the project, I had the opportunity to exchange with a specialist in this field who told me that it was possible. Challenging, but possible. Obviously this would need to be studied carefully and worked on a lot. But I believe that thanks to these advanced featured, V. could make a difference and stand out from its competitors on the market.