The project consisted of designing an app from scratch related to wellness.
The scope of the project was to create an MVP product and deliver a high fidelity prototype that shows:
Ukiyo is a mindfulness app that helps users to make the habit of relaxing through the blending of Mindful Colouring and Journaling techniques.
Ukiyo (u-key-yo) is a Japanese word which means living in the moment, detached from the bothers of life.
Research Goal: Identify people’s pain points and motivations while meditating or using relaxation techniques.
Target: 28 - 38 year-old people who have tried meditation or other relaxation techniques in order to reduce stress levels.
Hypothesis: People can experience frustration when trying to make the habit of meditation because they don't have effective tools or methods to achieve it.
I did secondary research in order to learn about the benefits of using relaxation and meditation techniques. Through this research I learnt that mindful colouring and journaling are techniques are similar to meditation in terms of benefit such as:
Then I realised a benchmark analysis with direct and indirect competitors regarding in order to compare their product proposals, features and colouring techniques.
8 people were interviewed in order to cover the following topics:
The research process was useful to obtain insights that allowed me to define a problem and jobs to be done by the users on the app. Below, there are the main insights discovered by the research with the job to be done that the app must allow to do.
Lack of knowledge on meditation is the reason for which people use relaxation techniques only in stressful moments instead of doing as a daily practise.
People want to make a habit of meditation but don’t achieve it because stop practising it when overcome the stressful situation. Also, they get bored easily.
People do artistic activities such as painting, reading, and listening to music in order to reduce stress levels. They consider meditation’s benefits are connecting with the present time and doing introspection.
With the insights I was able to define the problem statement by the research and how might we question.
Problem statement: People need to incorporate relaxing techniques to their daily routine to help reduce their stress levels.
How might we help people to adopt and maintain the habit of meditation or disconnection to reduce their stress levels?
After deciding the app proposal, I defined the user journey which consist of three steps:
I defined the use cases for each step and did a concept testing to test the idea of the app. This test helped me to discover the AHA moment occurs when the user first does the mindfulness session.
After that, I did a Moscow to decide what features will be include on the MVP version of the app.
I started to look for inspiration on Pinterest. Since the app’s name is Japanese I chose an oriental style and a light colour palette in order to transmit calm and harmony.
The logo was inspired by the Cherry Blossom flower, also known as sakura, which is considered the national flower of Japan.
This moodboard was the inspiration to create the app's style tile and design principles, which are:
BE CALM. Design should create a relaxing and quiet atmosphere.
BE SIMPLE. A design which uses fewer basic elements to achieve the same power is simpler.
BE INSPIRING. Inspire through selected collections of artworks and new journal techniques.
BE ENTERTAINING. Functions must be intuitive and reliable before it can be fun for users.
The moodboard and the design principles were the guidelines to create the UI kit that allowed me to design all the screens of the app.
See the full version of the UI kit here.
After defining the app's design, I tested the high fidelity prototype and this guided usability test allowed me to identify some design flawless which were iterated.
The images below show the iterations that were made on the first prototype.
After applying changes as a result of testing, I defined the app final version.
This project was the most challenging because I had the opportunity to build an end to end apo while putting into practise all the knowledge and tools I learnt during the bootcamp. Also I learnt to work with an MVP mindset and prioritise the most important features that the product must have to do its main purpose.
Building a product from scratch taking into consideration a real problem that was obtained from the research made me understand even more the importance of the role of UX/UI designers and how we can have a positive impact on people’s lives.
