Case study - 2024
My roles
UI Specialist, UX Designer
Category
Academic
Team
3 UX Designers
Duration
1 week
Overview
For this project, I collaborated with my fellow design students. We were given a problem statement and were tasked with developing a solution using the Design Sprint methodology.
Problem Statement
Our goal was to create a digital platform that provides accessible mental health support for remote workers facing stress and isolation, integrating mindfulness practices seamlessly into their daily routines.
We kicked off the sprint by sharing knowledge, understanding the problem and choosing a target.
Long Term Goal
Offer personalized features for each user needs focusing on solving long-term issues related to mental health.
Sprint Question
How can we build an app that will motivate, without overwhelming?
Desk Research
I researched about the impact of remote work on mental health and came across a 2023 report by Buffer, which offered valuable insights to our project.
How Might We?
Each person wrote their own HMW questions, which we then evaluated and voted on to identify the most compelling ones and at the end we got the final HMWs that would guide our design process.
Through the insights gathered from our research, we identified our target audience:
Target
Remote workers who are experiencing stress, anxiety, and feelings of isolation. They are looking for an accessible digital platform that provides personalized mental health support and mindfulness tools to help them navigate their challenges effectively.
After a full day dedicated to understanding the problem and selecting our target, we shifted our focus to solutions.
The Four Sketch Steps
This process involved writing down ideas, sketching and doodling them, making a Crazy 8’s, and finally producing a detailed solution sketch.
My Idea
I wanted to develop a feature that could help users overcome focus and productivity challenges—an issue I personally struggled with during my almost four years of remote work.
Struggling to stay on task often caused me a lot of anxiety, but when I tried productivity methods like the Pomodoro Technique, I noticed real improvement in my performance.
This experience inspired me to focus on creating a feature that would help remote workers better manage their tasks and boost their productivity.
In this phase we followed the Sticky Decision process. This involved voting on the best ideas, giving feedback, voting again, and having a final discussion to narrow down our options. After this process, we landed on the final sketch.
Solution Sketch
The chosen solution was my own concept, and here’s what it looked like:
My Perspective
As I mentioned before, I wanted the main feature to focus on improving productivity and focus. But I also included elements to address other challenges we discovered in our desk research.
For example, after users finish their tasks, they go through a quick process to help them unplug from work, which tackles the issue that 22% of remote workers face—struggling to disconnect at the end of the day.
I also thought about adding mood tracking, to allow users to better understand their behaviors and feel motivated to improve performance.
Storyboard
Now that we have the final solution defined, my teammates and I each created storyboards and after the Decider reviewed them, we chose to move forward with Jou-An’s storyboard.
Based on my final sketch and Jou-An’s storyboard, we finally defined our solution:
Solution
Design an app that helps remote workers integrate mindfulness into their daily routines by supporting focus on tasks, tracking mood progression, and providing tools to unplug from work at the end of the day.
In this phase, we divided responsibilities among the team, and my task was to create the wireframes, hi-fi mockups and prototype.
Wireframe
My priority was to ensure that the app felt simple and easy to use, minimizing any potential stress users might already be experiencing from work. This approach led me to design a clean and straightforward user interface to keep things intuitive.
Challenges
One of the challenges I faced during the design phase was selecting the right color palette. I wanted to use calming colors, but I was mindful that low-saturation tones could sometimes feel dull or even sad.
After discussing it with my teammates, we chose orange as the primary color to convey a sense of energy and warmth while still maintaining a balanced and motivating vibe.
For the test phase, we followed both the Guerrilla Usability Test and the System Usability Scale (SUS) survey to gather user feedback.
Guerrilla Key Findings
We also got a few interesting comments from users:
User 1
“I wouldn’t follow the ‘disconnect from work’ steps to finish the tasks because I’m lazy.”
User 2
“I’m not sure if I would keep using the app after a few days.”
User 3
“I wouldn’t do the journaling because I don’t want to think about work after I finish with it.”
SUS Results
Feedback showed that the app’s design aesthetics were well-received, but improvements were needed to clarify certain features and refine data visualizations.
Future Improvement Ideas
Based on user feedback, we’re planning a few refinements to improve the experience further. We’d like to streamline the mood tracking flow to feel more natural, redesign data visualization with clearer charts and accessible colors, and make the “disconnect from work” feature more adaptable to fit different user needs. These updates would help keep users more engaged and address some of the challenges uncovered in testing.
Final Thoughts
The feedback gathered during the testing phase confirmed that the app’s core features were well-received, particularly in terms of design aesthetics. However, it also highlighted areas for improvement, such as clarifying certain functionalities and refining the data visualization.
For the Future
Hopefully, we'll be able to address the issues identified during user testing while refining and expanding the app's features. Our goal is to create a more intuitive and engaging experience that not only meets the needs of remote workers but also encourages consistent use.
