Streamlining insurance processes with automation while documenting memories in the lab.
UI/UX Designer (Explore/Filtering Page)
January - May 2023
Jen, Zainab, Azaan, Kyuwon
The Guiding Question
How might we rethink and expand Headspace’s current functionality to be more inclusive for different lifestyles and personal needs?
01: Understanding the Wellness Space
As we read the literature surrounding mental health and well-being, we quickly came to the realization that this terminology is inconsistent. We needed to clarify these terms for us moving forward.
Key Words:
Mindfullness: the practice of non-judgemental awareness of present moments
Meditation: the avenue or technique used to practice mindfulness
Competitive Analysis
We also conducted a competitive analysis by comparing Headspace to five other leading mental health and wellness apps.
Interviews
We sat down with 20 college students for hour-long interviews. We also had an interview with a lecensed therapist to gain a professional perspective on the matter.
02: Developing Insights
Key Findings
After reviewing our data through sessions of affinity mapping, we found four main patterns in our qualitative data.
User Journeys and Personas
From our analysis, we also identified two main members of our user audience with varying goals and needs to help guide our design decisions moving forward.
03: Initial Ideation
Information Architecture
There is not a doubt that Headspace is one of the leading meditation apps on the market. For that reason, we focused on making small improvements to enhance the overall functionality and highlight the content instead of changing the entire Headspace framework.
One of Headspace's strengths isthe variety of resources they provide. However, this was also a source of frustration when assessing potential user journeys. In our brainstorming sessions, we focused on developing a mental model (heavily influenced by Spotify) aimed at reducing the cognitive load in the in-app experience.
Here are the main areas where we saw room for growth:
Paper Prototypes
We created low fidelity sketches to first conceptualize our ideas.
Mid-Fi Wireframes
After rounds of internal and external feedback, we created over 50 screens to begin our proof of concept. Here are a few screens from this phase of our design process.
04: Putting It Together
Our Proposals
Click through our presentation to see our final design recommendations.
Follow the blue highlighted areas to click navigate our prototype. For the best experience, please interact with the prototype in full screen.
Key Takeaways
Throughout the semester, I enjoyed working with UX designers with different design approaches and skills. From this, I learned new techniques, shortcuts, and perspectives to implement in my future projects. If I had more time, I would like to gather further quantitative data to gauge key performance indicators (KPIs). For my specific designs, I would like compare the time needed to find a specific meditation in the old and new versions of the explore page. I would also like to gather data on the use of the filtering feature by looking at the number of clicks.
Overall, I would like to give a shout-out to my incredible co-leads, Jen and Zainab, for pushing the team to be very particular and reflective in the design process. I was challenged to have a rationale for every choice, no matter how mundane or inconsequential the addition seemed.
