What We Did
Together as a team, we made a final prototype for an app that we believe, based on our research, will help reduce stress while also making someone healthier by working out and doing mental exercises. To get to the point of the final prototype we had to go through many steps. First, we started out by coming up with an idea of how to improve wellness in someone. Then we moved on to doing research through multiple different methods and reporting on our findings in the way of personas and infographics. After that, we created a flow chart for how one of our personas would go through and find our app. We then started wireframing by starting with a flow chart that we divided into sub-flows for each of us to wireframe part of the app. Then we each individually tested our wireframes and found pain points that would need to be fixed for our final refined prototype. Finally, we made a final prototype that would fix the pain points that we had and have a more complete and ready-to-code feel.
Motivation
We all have a lot of stuff to do, between studying for tests, working on projects, doing homework, going to work to make some money, working out, and having some free time. We all get really stressed out, and if the four of us all have this issue there is a good chance that a lot of other people do. We wanted to make something that could help reduce people's stress in a way that could also make them healthier.
Research Stage
Research Methods
Key
Takeaways
How Might We
Question
Personas &
Infographics
Research
Summary
We used four different research methods to conduct our research
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Contextual Inquiry
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IDEO Cards
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Surveys
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Interviews
Through this research we found our key takeaways to be
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Taking a break from something can help you gather your thoughts and help your mental health so that you can improve your work and have better focus.
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A level of preparedness can determine how you handle and deal with that stressful situation.
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A big cause of stress can be from having too much to do and being overwhelmed with everything that someone has to do.
From our research we came up with a How Might We question which would guide us for the rest of our project.
Our question was:
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That a major part of stress is from being overwhelmed by having too much to do and not enough time to do it. This is also something that does not have immediate validation and may not feel like you have put in as much effort as doing something physical. How might we make something that would help people with being overwhelmed in a way that relieves their stress, and helps them build up their mental and physical health in the process? We might be able to help people with this by making something that organizes when people have to get things done, and while they are working on it, inform them that it is time to take a break and offer them an activity to do that does not require too much thinking. This could be something that is either physical, like taking a walk or going to the gym or just something that turns your mind off, like doing simple chores around the house.
We made two personas from our research that also guided us throughout the rest of the project.
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Stressful Sam
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John Henery
We also made one infographic that would also guide the rest of our project. All of these can be found by clicking on the button below.
Through our research, we ended up finding that a lot of people deal with stress in their daily lives. Stress was normally caused by not being prepared for something or by having too much to do and being overwhelmed by it all. However, we found that there are a number of ways to deal with it and help reduce it. One way we found was by making a list of everything that was needing to be done and when it needed to be done. Another way, was by doing a task that takes your mind off of the tasks that you are doing, some examples of this can be by going to the gym, going for a walk, or doing some chores around your house. Going to do a physical activity seemed effective as it gave people immediate validation of feeling better in a physical way. A mental activity would help calm someone down and take their mind off of the things that would cause them stress.
Concept
We plan on making an app that will allow you to list input everything that you have to get done and when you have to get it finished. This will help people figure out what they have to do so they do not feel as overwhelmed. We plan to make this usable by anyone and everyone, no matter if they are a CEO of a company or a student in college with a lot of work. We plan to have a screen where you press a button for when you are going to start doing work, and after a certain amount of time, an alarm will go off and tell you to do an activity. These activities can be short, like go take a short walk, long like going to the gym, or mentally where you do something that you just turn your brain off for a certain amount of time. We want to include this so that way someone can take a break to let off some steam to reduce stress. This will also remind people of when the due date for something is coming up.
Prototyping
Journey Map
We made a Journey map that would be used to show how someone would go from finding the app to using the app
Flow Diagram
We made a flow diagram as a way to see all of the possible ways someone could navigate the app and get from page to page
Wireframes
We made wireframes that would be the beginning prototype for how the app would look and feel to do initial testing.
Pain Points
We had a few pain points that stood out from testing our wireframes.
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Titles/Page Names not lining up on pages
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The back button is confusing and hard to find.
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Activity pop-up unknown of where it came from.
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Having not many activities on the activity lists.
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The inability to create custom activities.
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The inability to see what tasks have been completed
Refinied Prototype
We made a refined prototype that looked a lot more complete and in the final stages of prototyping.