UX/UI Case Study | Designing a wellness app
Goal: To design a native IOS app.
Tools: Miro & Figma
Scope: 2 Weeks
For one of the last Ironhack projects, we were asked to design a wellness app from scratch focusing on the problem discovery & definition for the MVP.
We could choose any topic within the wellness industry: sports tracking, sleep quality tracking, nutrition, smoking quitting…and deliver something unique. Curious already? Let me take you through my process.
What is wellness?
To get off to a good start and to get some ideas, I read up on the definition of Wellness, which is commonly defined as making conscious choices to achieve a healthy lifestyle whether working on the body, mind or spirit.
At this point services as Treatwell, Headspace or Clue came to my mind. But there was one topic that was gaining importance over the others: the sports industry.
To this day I have not been able to find an app capable of motivating me to do sports even when I know how beneficial physical activity is. So I came up with the idea of rethinking existing businesses such as Urban Sports Club or Gympass.
Which new features and changes should these services include to be more desirable? My goal was to create a new app that should lay on motivating its users to stay sportingly active.
Competitive and visual analysis
The first thing I did was to check what was the existing offer. I took a look not only at the sport industry but also at other services that would focus on wellness experiences.
I was first interested Groupon, a marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services at a very cheap price.
The second I wanted to check at Treatwell that allows the booking of all kinds of beauty treatments.
For the visual part, I gathered different ideas and jotted down what I thought might be useful in later steps.
Getting to know the user
Starting with my user research I did a survey which was responded to by 25 people.
After gathering enough quantitative data I follow the survey with a couple of interviews with people who had used Urban Sports Club or Gympass in the past to get some user insights. Among my findings, people were saying:
“Sport is a ‘must do’ for me. I’m getting rusty over the years and I feel a certain pressure because I’m getting older and I want to stay healthy”. — Male, 35 years.
“I would like there to be a platform that shows activities and self-care activities too ” — Female, 26 years.
“Why don’t sharing activities with my friends? So they can catch up and join me there” — Male, 29 years.
Helping myself with an affinity diagram I was able to identify their goals, frustrations and motivations in their relationship with sport.
Following I created Andy as my user persona: a guy in his early thirties who has been so far has quite sedentary.
Defining the problem to solve
As expected the motivation is the biggest pain point to solve for this product I’m trying to design. So I started asking myself: How may I motivate my users to stay sporty active while using our platform?
I started by ideating some solutions to all the goals, frustrations, and motivations of the people I had interviewed and I prioritized them with the help of the MosCow technique according to the value they could provide to the MVP.
Based on everything I had found out so far, I decided to focus on the following hypothesis.
I believe that having a personalized feed and rewards for young inactive people will make them stay motivated to do sports regularly.
For a better understanding of the product, I helped myself by completing the value proposition canvas and a strategy blueprint.
How should the MVP work?
Focusing on the functionality of the product, I first designed the sitemap of the app. Its main menu should consist of:
- Home: The user has the capacity of search and find the most combining activities for him/her.
- Rewards: After completing the sports plan, the user can choose and book rewards from here.
- Check-in: The user has the capacity to check in quickly anywhere.
- Profile page: The user can track his progress and change his profiles configuration.
Following up, I designed a User Flow that should show best the functionality of my new app.
And then, I could finally start doing some sketches to later move on to Figma and complete the first wireframes with the help of a library.
Look and feel for the app
Before taking any decision regarding the UI of this app, I collected all the ideas I had had so far about the app branding. Some of there were coming already from the visual competitive analysis I did at the beginning of the project.
With the help of a mood board, I was able to iterate on my visual proposal for the app. And after testing it with users and confirming that my proposal fit with what they perceived, I started working on the style tyle of my project, which includes the colors, the fonts, and some cards I would use on the prototype.
With this Style Tyle I was aiming to create a colourful, youthful and vibrant brand.
Ta raaaaa….the prototype.
And now, I proudly present the App prototype, I used to validate my design process.
If I had more time
- I would further develop the idea of sharing the personal activity with friends.
- I would go deeper in the understanding of how could be this product monetise, which memberships could a-raise from this idea, and which of them would be more attractive for my user.
Outcome and key learnings
Designing an app from the ground up was very fun but also a challenge for me.
Having no boundaries at all, not even a partner or a stakeholter makes it difficult to focus on a specific problem without beating about the bush. Nevertheless, I think I have worked on a good niche and followed the design process correctly.
Being a bit critical of my result, I wish I could have approach the visual part differently. In some ways it feels childish to me and I think it might be better suited to the needs of a user in his or her thirties.
A big thank you for going all the way with me. Feel free to leave any comment or suggestion!
