U
In collaboration with Meera Abed, Katreena Halasa, Mohammed Al Sayegh, & Hanine Hamad
2021
UX/UI Design
AUS
Course Service Design
Brief Overview
The project revolved around the theme of wellbeing, with the initial research question of “How might we protect and support wellbeing (with pandemic burnout)?” It involved going through the double diamond process of discover, define, develop, and deliver in order redefine the project scope and gain insight into the problem, as well as define an area of focus and develop an efficient service-based solution.
Wellbeing in general.
Bring back pre-pandemic wellbeing.
Physical, mental, social, and emotional wellbeing.
Enhancing and encouraging positive wellbeing.
Finding ways to reduce or avoid burnout.
Research
In order to redefine our problem, we filtered the findings into defining key themes and patterns that can assist in understanding the problem and defining our scope. These key themes were discovered from insight we gained from our primary and secondary research. Our primary research consisted of interviews and a documented discussion, while a secondary research focused on gaining a deeper understanding of wellbeing and burnout.
Primary Research
We conducted interviews with three target groups, with the focus on mental health and therapy. These groups were people who have been to therapy, people who have never been to therapy and mental health experts. During the interview we utilized the 5 Whys method in order to dig deeper and get to the core of the problem.
We also conducted a documented discussion in order to gain a deeper understanding of the user and have them engage in a deeper conversation with regard to wellbeing. The discussion consisted of a group of eight American University of Sharjah students, half of the group believe that they prioritize their wellbeing and the other half who realize that they do not prioritize their wellbeing. We gave them different statements, where they either agreed or disagreed and began discussing with an aim of reaching a common ground through generating a discussion. This part of our research was crucial to our process as it provided us with valuable key insights that were necessary to truly understand our user. In addition, it also gave us a better understanding of what the problem is and to pinpoint potential aspects we can use to develop our solution.
Insight & The User
From the information gained from our primary and secondary research, we have focused on key observations that help us gain more knowledge on the problem and may be used in our path towards creating a solution.
The key insight discovered are the following:
01
There is no right method to deal with stress.
05
Students under stress are willing to learn new ways to manage it.
02
The answer to people's struggles is usually clouded by stress.
06
Culture plays a vital role in shaping a person’s perception of wellbeing.
03
The main source of stress and anxiety among students is pressure to accomplish more, academic stress, and fear of the future.
07
If students continue to go through stress, they are at risk of escalating that stress into a burnout.
04
Therapy can take many forms depending on individual perception.
While the key user needs that were revealed are the need to:
01
Have tools that help with time management.
04
Have proper resources for mental health awareness.
02
Understand triggers that cause stress.
05
Gain a balanced lifestyle.
03
Find the right form of therapy for oneself.
Personas
From our research findings and insights, we have developed personas which define the target user on a deeper level. These personas can help us visualize and understand our target user in order to create a solution that can benefit them.
Problem Definition
Integrated in lifestyle.
Physical, mental, social, and emotional wellbeing.
Enhancing and encouraging positive wellbeing.
Customized to the user's definition of wellbeing.
Solution Development
Ideation
We began by conducting a brainstorming session as well as utilizing the hybrid brainstorming technique, we then shortlisted our huge umbrella of ideas from forty eight to five topics which are the VR Room, an Interactive Mirror, Public Wellbeing Service, Character Application, and an AI Companion. From this shortlist we began analyzing our ideas based on our user insight and our newly defined problem, in order to develop a solution that best fits user needs. This led to the development of our solution of a wellbeing character game application that blurs the line between digital life and reality for the user.
Solution Overview
In essence our solution is a customizable free application that is integrated into the users’ lifestyle to help them achieve their desired mental state through multiple features.
Service Blueprint
In order to visualize our solution and analyze how our user would experience it, we developed a service blueprint, which aids in planning the service delivery process as well as illustrating the user’s journey.
Value
The Value Proposition Canvas helped improve our customer understanding and gave us an insight on how to create clarity when delivering our solution. Value propositions provide the firm foundation for our offering, and they are critical factors in converting our ideas to successful solutions. They also help in setting the foundation of our business model canvas, which defines how our business will function and how we will create value.
Brand Strategy
The brand strategy canvas is the formula that serves us by giving us a strong start to our brand. This tool helped us develop a well-structured and relevant brand positioning. It defines our brand essence, personality, and values. From our brand strategy we can clearly define how we want our users to perceive us.
Branding
We named our solution U to maintain the focus on the user’s themselves and hinting at our goal of guiding users to improve their wellbeing by themselves.
The Service
Our solution is a character based free application focused on gamifying wellbeing. It is made to integrate into users’ lifestyle and help them develop and maintain their wellbeing. Through our application, we are building a strong relationship with our customers and guiding them into a better lifestyle because the solutions to all their mental issues are within themselves. As well as giving them incentives to prioritize their wellbeing. People will have easy access to the application through their phones and have it as a part of their day. Users will be able to customize their characters and the application will provide them with wellness activities curated based on their wellbeing goals. Users are incentivized to complete the activities through character updates and regular progress reports.
Application Prototype
A Prototype demonstrates the sample version of a solution. The prototype for our application illustrates the users journey throughout their use of our service, from signing up until they receive their progress report, one month later.
Experiment
In order to test the usability and effectiveness of our application we would utilize a program called MAZE through conducting usability testing that will enable us to improve our platform based on feedback.
Case Study
First, we were assigned the topic wellbeing by the professor. Right away, we started discussing the topic as a group and decided to do collective research. Later, we decided to focus on a specific area to narrow down our project topic. That area revolved around “How might we protect and support wellbeing (with pandemic burnout)?”
We tried to understand the problem through using many tools we learned from the course material such as focus groups, contextual interviews, journey map, and more. In addition, we interviewed experts in the field of psychology, people who have been to therapy, and people who did not but considered doing so. After we defined the problem and collected research to understand the user’s motives, we narrowed down our HMW into “How might we enhance students’ wellbeing through reducing stress?”
We gained valuable insights that helped us shape our ideas toward developing a solution.
We did deduce different ideas that have the potential to become an ideal solution that addresses our how might we question such as VR Room, Interactive Mirror, Public Wellbeing Center, Better Sleep Kit, and more.
But then we got feedback from our professor and guests who attended our presentation and they suggested that we go deeper with our interviews to get a human centric approach which will make it easier for us to finalize the solution.
And so, we took their advice into consideration, and we interviewed people more deeply.
We discovered that people believe the solutions to all their mental issues are within themselves and they only need incentives in order to develop and maintain their wellbeing.
We were surprised by the results of this finding. Therefore, the idea of creating an application seemed like an appropriate solution as it will be only used by users themselves. We also thought of having an AI Companion to complement our application. We wanted to integrate the human centric element into our service which ultimately impacted our HMW and altered it into “How might we incentivize people to prioritize their wellbeing?”. The alteration was due to our realization that people recognize that they need to prioritize their wellbeing but lack the stimuli to encourage them to do so.
Collecting data and listing valid ideas was surprisingly easy especially since it was a group work. So, we had the opportunity to exchange opinions. Later on, we started creating mockups for our ideas. Then, we had to work on the branding and prototyping to make the solution looks like a real application and connect it to the AI Companion. It was difficult to present both ideas clearly.
