Tools

Miro
Figma
​Discord

Role

UI Design
Prototyping
UX Research
​Visual Design

Duration

August 2020 - December 2020 (4 months)

Meet the Team!

Celine
​Edouard

Alaina 
Chapple

Almasi
​Gathoni

Sukgwan
​Hong

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Introduction
• Kickoff Meeting
• Research

          - Competitive Audit
          - Research Report
          - Modeling

• Requirements

          - User Interviews
          - Affinity Mapping
          - Context Scenarios

• Frameworks
• Refinement
• Final Product
• Conclusion

Overview

This semester, my Interaction Design I class had a semester long project where we made a prototype for a mobile app. We were assigned teams based on what topics we were interested in. My team and I created a mental health app called Intune. The goal of Intune is to address mental health and self-care among college students. Due to the current circumstances of the pandemic, we collaborated virtually through this entire process. We held meetings via Discord and collaborated on prototyping via Miro and Figma. A major goal of this final project was to apply what we have learned about Goal-Directed Design.

I conducted user research, created research questions and wireframes, collaborated on prototyping, worked on affinity mapping, completed the introduction and competitive audit for the research report, conducted interviews, started revising research report based on feedback, helped with persona hypothesis, helped create interview questions, created context scenarios, and collaborated on our final research report.

What is Goal-Directed Design?

Goal-Directed Design is a design process designers undergo in order to gain a better understanding of users and their goals. This process allows designers to research the domain of their product, its users, and to learn how to create a product that allows users to easily achieve their goals.

Goal-Directed Design Process

Introduction

The purpose of Intune is to allow college students to better manage their mental health. It also aims at teaching college students more about self care. Our app wants to create a safe space for college students to address their mental health along with any issues they may have with it. It is an environment where college students can learn and share among one another. Our app offers multiple resources that allow our users to get the most out of their experience. 

Kickoff Meeting

Before fully beginning our Goal-Directed Design process, we held a kickoff meeting via Discord to introduce ourselves and set the groundwork for our project. At the kickoff meeting, we discussed our vision statement, problem statement, as well as any assumptions about our app.

Problem Statement

Students will be able to easily access our app to manage their mental health and gain useful information to live a less stressful, healthier life. Using simple and familiar user interface, the app will be user-friendly. Intune does have in-app advertisements because we are a free application. In-app advertisements tend to distract users, so advertisements will be placed at the bottom of our interface to reduce users’ potential inconvenience.
​
At Intune, users can share and evaluate their own mental health care tips in addition to learning more from our app. Intune also focuses on users forming community with one another. A recent report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) states that community is important to mental health it provides people with connections and gives them a feeling of connection with others. By forming community on our app, we expect users to effectively improve the way they take care of their mental health.

Vision Statement

The current state of individual self-care and mental health has focused primarily on seeking counseling, writing down thoughts, distracting oneself, and relaxation practices just to name a few. What existing products/services fail to address is not everyone feels comfortable speaking out about their mental health. Others do not have the proper resources or access to mental health services. Intune will address these disparities by encouraging and assisting young adults in bettering their mental health. ​

My Role in Research

The Research Phase of Goal-Directed Design allowed us to gain more context for our app which allowed us to create specific user goals. Research allowed us to learn more about our problem space and understand what we need to provide to our users. 

My part of acquiring research was conducting a competitive audit. A competitive audit is an examination of competitors Our top competitors are Headspace, Mindshift, and Happify. I downloaded each app and explored what they offered users. I took detailed notes on what the apps did correctly and what they could have improved. This was important to our Goal-Directed Design Process because it helped us understand what we will need to include in our final product as well as what details we need to include in order to stand out against competitors.

Competitive Audit

A competitve audit is where I analyzed our competitors. This audit helped to assess what our competitors' strengths and weaknesses are. Hence, heloing me pinpoint what our users will expect from our app and how we can fill in the areas where competitiors fell short. Exploring competitors’ apps allowed me to play the role of the user. I was able to see what features I found most important and useful. There were some features on one app that I would have liked to see in another. There are features that all three competitors had that showed me what basic requirements we will need. And after exploring all three apps I was able to decipher what they were lacking and what Intune would need to include to stand out. 

The following is the notes from my competitive audit:

Headspace App Notes

• Login, Apple Connect, Facebook Connect
  
• Connect with friends and other users
  
• Statistics (19 days of Headspace increases happiness by 16%)
  
• Introductory “Get to know me”
  
• Teaches life-long meditation techniques
  
• Focuses on stress, anxiety, sleep
  
• NOT free
  
  • 69.99 annual
    
  • 12.99 monthly
    
• Sunshine logo (consistently used throughout app)
  
• Option for notifications
  
• Daily quotes and meditation tips
  
• Community story
  
  • Actual users share testimonies
    
• Different learning courses
  
• Videos with real life users
  
• Interactive exercises
  
• Can add “buddies”
  
• Track your meditation journey/progress
  
• Invite others
  
• Playlists for different categories
  
• Search courses according to mood, time of day, activities
  
• Beginner friendly
  
• Group meditation (live users)
  
• Layout turns to night mode for sleep related sections
  
• Sleeping audios
  
• Workout section to encourage exercise
  
  • Provide trainers’ names (make it more personal)
    
• Playlists to help with focus
  
  • Different categories (lo-fi, serene, etc.)
    
  • Includes focus exercises/practices
    
• Wildlife videos (calming)
  

Happify App Notes

• Outlines goals when you open app
  
• Activities and games are specifically per user
  
• Quotes and fun facts every day
  
• Tracks progress
  
• Assessment in the beginning
  
  • gender, age, job/school, medical conditions, relationship status, kids, what’s going on in personal life
    
• Private profile or “community mode”
  
• Statistics on benefits of app
  
• Make posts
  
• Progress divided in sections
  
• Tracks specific skill progress (savor, thank, aspire, give, empathize, revive)
  
• Different assessments throughout app
  
• Choose activities/games based on specific skill targets
  
• Articles
  
  • Divided into categories (mental health & happiness, acts of kindness, infographics, love & relationships, etc.)
    
• Can send encouraging posts to others
  
• Can follow other users
  
• Join groups
  
• Forums
  
• Invite others to app
  
• Meditation tips
  
• Free
  

Mindshift App Notes

• Personalized greetings
  
• Can rate your anxiety and mood
  
• Can write in how user is feeling
  
• Add symptoms of anxiety
  
• Specify your anxiety (general worry, social anxiety, perfectionism, etc.)
  
• Tools: healthy thinking, chill zone, taking action
  
• “Learn” tab
  
  • What is anxiety?
    
  • What happens when you’re anxious?
    
  • How can I overcome fears?
    
  • How can Mindshift help?
    
• Calming colors
  
• “Quick Relief” tab
  
  • Take a breath
    
  • Shift your thinking
    
  • Ground yourself
    
  • Take a small step
    
  • Get help
    
• Can add personal goals
  
  • Motivational popup that explains importance of goal setting
    
  • Define your goal (400 character limit)
    
  • “Learn more” option about goals
    
  • Schedule your goals
    
• Share your progress
  
• Option to share app
  
• Can share your story
  
• Motivational text
  
  • “Realize you’re not alone”
    
  • “Surround yourself with support”
    
  • “Help others recognize anxiety”
    
• Free
  

Research Report

Our research report introduced the topic of our app and explained how we went about conducting our research. We were about to establish assumptions, create personas, explore literature to better understand our audience, and draw information from user interviews. Once we all finished our parts of the research report, we submitted our work into one Google Slides document.

Research Report

Modeling

What are personas?

Personas are hypothetical users used to define behaviors, patterns and user goals. During the Goal-Directed design process, we use personas to differentiate the various types of users. Personas are given names and a brief description of who they are. Giving them names and background information make them appear as real people. This helps by allowing stakeholders and designers alike to empathize with the personas. It makes the relationship with personas more personal.

There are multiple types of personas. For Intune we stuck to two types: primary and secondary. The primary persona which is the main target of the interface design. Secondary personas are mostly satisfied by the primary persona’s requirements. However, there are still distinct details that set the secondary persona aside from the primary. The primary persona is our main focus. However, the needs and goals of the secondary persona are able to be accomplished based on what the primary persona requires. 

User Interviews

My team and I interviewed four college students ranging in ages and demographic background for our interviews in order to acquire enough information to specify user goals and expectations. To prepare for our user interviews, we held another meeting via Discord where we laid out what specific questions we would ask users.

During the user interview process, I held the roles of both moderator and facilitator. In both roles, I was able to get more insight from a potential user and establish specific user goals. This helped with completing our requirements list later in the Goal-Directed Design process.

Affinity Mapping

Once we finished our user interviews, we created an affinity map. Affinity mapping is a method we used in order to organize our ideas and place all the data we learned from our interviews in one place. We created four key questions for our affinity map. Each member placed their answers/notes into our Miro board.

View Affinity Maps

Context Scenario

A context scenario is a method of telling a story that depicts the ideal user experience. Creating a context scenario allowed us to walk through a typical user experience. It helped us to extract what important details we will need to include in the app in order to create an effective, pleasant user experience.

I created the context scenario for Intune and made sure to be detailed throughout the story to make sure my team and I have a better understanding of what our potential users will experience while interacting with our product.

View Context Scenario

Requirements

Based off our research, user interviews, personas, and context scenario, we were able to start a requirements list. We based our requirements off of what will be necessary to include in our final product in order to help our users achieve their goals. Our team leader, Almasi Gathoni, took this part on and recorded the following requirements:

• Sign up and login
  
• Onboarding
  
• Splash Screen
  
• Navigation
  
• Personal Profile Menu
  
• Therapist sign up form
  
• Therapist chat box
  
• Booking systems
  
• Self-care activities feed
  
• Social Feed
  
• Social chat boxes
  
• Calendar intergrations
  
• Push notifications
  
• Native videos
  
• Native maps
  
• App analytics
  

Frameworks

The Frameworks Phase of Goal-Directed Design is where we start to make design decisions and define the flow of our app through wireframing. Wireframing is a process where we create a low-fidelity sketch of what our final product will look like. 

We all took on different parts of the Frameworks process. We collaborated on Miro so we would be able to wireframe simultaneously. I was in charge of utilities and extras such as calendars, articles, self-care exercises, courses & lessons, and multimedia.

Refinement

The Refinement Phase of Goal-Directed Design is similar to the Frameworks Phase. At this stage, we used keypath scenarios and validation scenarios to created detailed paths users would go through on the app. Key path scenarios are walkthroughs that and validation scenarios are storyboard paths in detail, having a focus on the interface.

Here, we applied the information we gathered from our personas and scenarios to address any areas we may have missed in the frameworks. Once we completed our wireframe, we were able to begin our prototype in Figma. We all took on different sections to work towards completing our final prototype. I created the welcome page that the viewer sees when first opening our app. It is a simple screen that displays our logo and app name. I created the sign-up page that allows the user to create an account for Intune. I also added the option for users to sign in with Gmail or Facebook to make the sign-up process easier. Our app wants to cater to users’ specific needs, so I added an assessment survey when users sign up for Intune.

Conclusion

This project gave me much needed Goal-Directed Design experience, being it was my first time getting to apply my knowledge firsthand. It taught me a lot about the design process and how important it is to keep an open mind throughout the process. My ideas may not always work the first time, but I am able to try different routes to achieve my goal. This project also reminded me of how helpful it is to work on a team. One idea may not work, but someone else’s may be the solution we need.

Given that this project was not originally designed to be conducted remotely, my group and I were able to adjust accordingly to the circumstances of COVID-19. I do look forward to more projects/employment opportunities similar to this project to get more hands-on experience with Interaction Design.

Moving Forward

After submitting our project, we received feedback from our professor, Michael Lahey. He went through our prototype and laid out what areas needed improvement. I greatly valued this feedback because it not only showed me what I will need to do moving forward when I go through the Goal-Directed Design process again, but I was able to make my own refinements. I made the adequate changes to the Intune prototype that my professor pointed out and am more confident in my final product:

View final Intune Prototype here: