Circle: A Self-Care Social Media Application
Problem Space
For this project, my 2 teammates and I chose to focus on self-care. Mental health awareness has gained more and more popularity over the years. As each year passes, it becomes more important to discuss and advocate. With that in mind, my team and I wanted to find out how people take care of their mental health by investigating their self-care routines and what they lack through user interviews in order to create a design solution to better support them.The following project took place between November 12, 2019 to November 22, 2019.
Users/Audience
First, my team and I created a screener survey. We weren’t really looking for any specific demographic information since any gender and any age can practice self-care. However, we did find that most of our sample contained young adults. The only things we checked for are that the individuals who filled out the survey practiced self-care often and did so recently, and were willing to participate in a user interview.
Research
Eventually, we were able to collect 5 users to interview and gain some insight on how they follow their self-care routines. Interestingly, all of our users said that music played a large role in their routines. Whether they listen to it to de-stress or while working out, it was a key factor that remained consistent following each interview. Other commonalities we found were that people like to take part in nature and mostly be with their friends to de-stress. I never expected people to make other individuals part of their self-care routine, because it’s self-care. With all of these factors combined, we can start synthesizing our data.
Synthesization
To group all of our data, my team and I decided an affinity map would be the best way to visually see all the common things found in each interview. After the groupings were made we were able to come up with “I” statements that would help us give perspective on what each group represents. The main “I” statements we focused on were:
- I find structure is integral in my routine.
- I use apps to help me with self-care.
- I find music to be helpful [in my routine].
- I use social interactions to distract myself [from stress].
- I like to be with nature.
These 5 statements were used to create a persona. We named our persona Chelsea. Chelsea is a Teaching Assistant in Long Island, NY who enjoys staying connected with her friends, enjoying nature, and listening to music often. Because of her busy schedule, she finds it difficult to implement a solid self-care routine. Chelsea wants to be able to maintain her personal self care routine while leveraging support from her friends. Overall, she wants to find the best of all worlds to be able to have that balance for herself.
After the persona was constructed, I was able to draft a problem statement. After a lot of feedback from my instructors, my team and I revised the statement multiple times to be able to clearly convey the problem we are trying to solve:
Everyday life poses numerous obligations for people leaving them with little time to organize a self-care routine for themselves and maintain it. Chelsea has a busy schedule with conflicting obligations and finds it difficult to have time to de-stress with her friends. How might we support her self-care routine by leveraging support from her friends?
Ideation
After completing the research and synthesizing the data, we can finally move on to the ideation phase of the double diamond process of UX Design. In order to draft potential solutions, my team and I participated in a design studio where we all conducted silent 5-minute rounds of wireframe sketching. After presenting our ideas and receiving feedback from one another, we went through an iteration round where we could combine parts of each other’s ideas to create a franken-idea. Ultimately, we were able to come up with an app idea that establishes a social media platform built only for a user’s close group of friends. Each user of the app would be able to log how they’re feeling mentally and physically and have a space to check in on their friends when they can’t always see them in person. The app would also feature the ability to send music, location suggestions to de-stress, and coping tools.
Upon completing the design studio, my team and I created a MoSCoW map to showcase the features we must, should, could, and won’t have in our prototype. We definitely wanted a social aspect to the application since all of our users said they participate in self-care through social interactions with their friends. However, we did not create a platform where you can add anyone and mutual friends. The features included in our “must” section are: daily check-in, share music, home button, share coping tools, send virtual hug, suggestions, friends list, and share places. In the “won’t” section, we placed features like “likes” and comments, finding mutual friends, posting pictures/videos, and posting stories. This app is meant to be for a close group of friends to instill trust and communication with one another for the sake of self-care.
Having a basis for what our application is going to be, a competitive analysis was constructed. We found Facebook to be a great comparator. Many of the same features are there, but it is mainly just used for communication, not self-care or wellness. Three competitors that we found were Calm, HabitShare, and Sanity & Self. Sanity & Self ended up being the most competitive of the three because it essentially is the same as our application. The difference is that their feed is anonymous and you can’t add your friends, and the app is only geared towards women. As stated from the beginning, we knew anyone of any gender or age or race could practice self-care so we made sure to be all inclusive.
Along the way, we also chose to use the iOS programming as our platform. Most of our users during user interviews said they used an iPhone. Additionally, we thought it would be very beneficial to partner with the company Apple for our application. By doing so, we would be able to incorporate Apple Music and Apple Health into the app and make the user experience much more convenient to have everything in one place.
Implementation
With now a great idea in mind, my team and I were ready to move on and create a low-fidelity prototype. Although many may see this step as unnecessary, I think it is important to catch possible missing pieces in the user flows and also inconsistencies in features. It is a very valuable tool before a higher fidelity prototype is made and it becomes a big task to change.
Constructing the low-fidelity prototype was a great challenge. I’d say that was the biggest challenge of this entire project for me. As we continued to do usability testing on the prototype, we kept finding issues that we knew would arise in further testing and had to make many pivots. It took a stab at my confidence for a bit because I thought it was a great idea. With so many issues, I began to doubt if this solution could even work. However, my teammates kept persisting and pivoting and we were able to finally come up with a prototype where users could complete the tasks successfully. In our usability tests, we asked users to log into the app, enter their mental and physical state, then send a song to a friend in their feed who isn’t doing so great. The main issue we found after we completed 5 usability tests was that every user thought to send a message and attach a song through there. One user said, “I would think if I’m sending something to my friend, I would just message them.” This was a problem because we specifically created a “Suggestions” feature that would designate all suggestions, including music, locations, and coping tools. Users did not understand why suggestions should be separate.
Gathering the data from our usability tests, I constructed a usability test report for my team so we can clearly see the main takeaways of what users liked and didn’t like. Mainly, the “Suggestions” feature needed to be removed. Due to this feature, all of our users had difficulty following the user flow. Another issue was that 3/5 users did not notice the “How are you feeling?” dropdown that would allow them to log their mental and physical health to share in their feed. 5/5 users could complete the task, but all did so with confusion. Ultimately, this prototype testing received a score of “Major Issue.”
On the bright side, we could now take this information to create a better mid-fidelity prototype. Upon opening the application, we would prompt the user to check their mental and physical health immediately so that it can’t be missed. The other change we made was to get rid of the “Suggestions” feature. Instead, we would integrate the ability to attach songs, locations, and coping tools into the messaging feature. Users can type a message to a friend and attach things similar to attaching a file in an e-mail.
At this point, my team and I have created a name for our application: Circle. We chose this name to represent the circle of friends the user would add into the app to keep up to date with.
With the slight flow change, there was a major improvement in our mid-fidelity usability testing. In the usability test report I constructed, it received a score of “Minor Issue.” All users (5/5) were able to complete the task successfully and understood the intentionality of the application. In our prototype, we wanted to show tapped and active states so users had to click twice in order to navigate to the next page. We did not mean for that to show in the prototype, but the hotspots and animations ended up causing that to happen. So because of that, there was some slight confusion because it caused users to think they were clicking on something wrong. That is something I definitely learned for the future — I never want the user to think they are doing something wrong when it was 100% the prototype failing in its capabilities.
Now, we were able to move on and create the high fidelity prototype. Taking the additional feedback we received from the mid-fidelity prototype testing, we got rid of showing tapped and active states. We did not get rid of this information because it is valuable, it just was not necessary for the user to see during testing. We also had to change the wording at the beginning of the flow where users would log their mental and physical health. We changed “log in your feelings…” to “log your feelings…” because users thought they had to sign into an account. Previously, users could send a location suggestion, but it felt unnatural to users to tell a sad friend to go somewhere. Instead, we implemented a “Suggest Meetup” feature where two users can plan a place to meet and de-stress with each other. Some other icon names were changed as well. At first, we changed “Coping Tools” to “Content” because some users said it could be patronizing to send or receive coping tools if you’re not doing that well and you’re not a mental health professional. To combat this, we wanted to make this altered feature a place to save, send, and receive self-care and mental health articles that are written by professionals. Having advertisements within these articles could also generate the monetization for being able to incorporate Apple Music into our app. The label “Content” didn’t make sense in the mid-fi testing, so we changed it to “Articles” in our hi-fidelity prototype. Overall, the app looked to be a great success. Many users loved the idea and what it represents. One user even said they would use this app because, “I’m helping people I love.”
Next Steps
The next steps for this project would obviously be to conduct usability testing on our hi-fidelity prototype. Although we have create solutions for all of the issues we found in our mid-fidelity testing, it does not mean that everything is solved. The testing would be done on different individuals who have not seen any of our prototypes before to ensure the feedback is accurate and not contaminated.
Outcomes
I learned a lot during this project. Even though I did not learn many new techniques or skills compared to my previous projects, I learned a lot about myself. The past two weeks were full of ups and downs, but mostly downs. I struggled with imposter syndrome, thinking I can’t be a great UX Designer or Researcher without the guidance of my instructors or the dependency on my team. On November 22nd, my team and I presented our entire project journey to two stakeholders. Although the presentation and the feedback was great, I felt disappointed. With every comment and critique, I thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The perfectionist in me is something that is going to take a long time to tone down. However, I love this quality because it reassures me that I am putting out something great. On the down side, it has kept me from feeling proud and confident in who I am as a UX Designer. As I have been taught in the last 6 weeks at my User Experience Design Immersive Program, I can only fail forward. I cannot wait to see what the next project entails and I look forward to trying to trust myself and my skills.
