Sweeten Up

A self care app that facilities healthy habit building through social recognition

Motivation/inspiration:

As an art college student chasing by constant deadlines and the pressure to create. I know very well how important it is to maintain healthy routines, relatively good mood and release my stress from time to time.

Year:

2022

Duration:

3 months

Type:

Mobile & watch

Role:

Individual Project

Project Process

week 1

week 3

week 5

week 7

week 9

week 11

week 13

User Research

Competitive Analysis

Wireframes

User Testing

Protoype

Finalize & Reflect

Problem Statement

Although young people nowadays value their mental health more, but they often find it difficult to persevere with. They need something more than a mood tracker or routine builder.

Problem

COVID-19 pandemic triggers 25% increase in prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide
Daily routines have always helped better manage stress levels, anxiety, and mental health.
Stress is a leading cause of many of our mental and physical health issues.
Stress reduction is the number one benefit of self-care apps.
Mental Health issue has affected the daily life of young people as 46% report having less motivation to do activities they usually enjoyed. 36% feel less motivated to do regular chores.

Target Audience

Millennials/Gen-Z

values their mental health and interested in self-care
would like to keep a positive cycle with habit tracker
aim at building a health-focused lifestyle , increase motivation& improve daily mood

Digital Solution

Designing an app to assist young people in their self-care, daily productivity improvement & mental health journey with social recognition adding in.

Wrap a candy with a short journal that made you day, get other people's "candies" and enjoy those wonderful daily moments that sweeten up their day!

Solution

Main Features

Homepage

Routine Builder

Candy Machine

Plan & Task

Candy Journal

Trending/Analyze

Main Features

Primary Research

Understand how young people currently maintain and strengthen their mental health, improve their productivity — what works and doesn’t work for them

Method:

Interviews

Number:

10 people

Group:

Young professionals & college students

Research

User Journey

By outlining the current journey of using an app daily, we can figure out what need improvements.

Difficult to preserve with

"I've used a lot self-care app, usually few months and I quit. I find I get lazier every day and it's just hard to carry on."

Taking too much time

"I once tried to record my mood & mental health through app, but it required me to take survey everyday and it took at least 10 minutes to fill in. That was too much for me."

Don't have all functions I need

"I need to download 2-3 apps in order to keep everything in track, it will be great if there's a app that can build routine & take journal at the same time.

Feel like using the app in a silo

"I sometimes feel lonely while using app to manage my life. Maybe human is social animal, I just feel it would be good if I can share it with someone"

Persona

Identifying specific use cases through personas helps us better scope our service.

Competitor Analyze

Get to know the existing competitors helps us get a better ideas of what's missing for our audience.

Research through Moscow method

According to previous research & interviews, I used a Moscow method to summary the prioritization of different feature.

MUST HAVE

SHOULD HAVE

COULD HAVE

WON'T HAVE

mood tracker
plan & task
journal entry
routine builder
1-tap checkin

privacy & password
sharing with other users/outside app
create own daily affirmation quotes
meditation timer

weekly data reflect
past records(mood, plans, journals)
filters for candy box(private/public)

NO daily survey for checking in
NO complex features

Site Map

Based on my research, I defined my value proposition and outlined the main features to define the scope of this project. I created an information architecture that gave clarity to the user flow.

Wireframes

Wireframes

Comparative usability testing

Introducing an application to new users is hard, How Might We guide them through quick and clear?

Method A: Click through onboarding process

Key takeaways:

Nice and clear to go through - just a few clicks
Strong eager to skip
Instructions look different from what user will really use in the app, which may confuse them
Not interesting and attracting enough

Method B ( Final choice) : In-app popup introductions for each feature

Key takeaways:

Able to see the app pages directly
Introducing each feature straight forward
Feels like the intro is blending into the app
Simple and clear

Identity Design

Logo

Color Palette

Sweeten Up

Logo

#0C0D58

#7098A8

#C7EEE6

#FDB2AD

#E4D6F0

#FCE5CD

Font

Mohr Rounded Bold

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

!@#$%^&*()

Poppings Bold

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

!@#$%^&*()

Poppings Regular

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

!@#$%^&*()

Interactive Prototype

Add a task & finish a task

Open a candy (journal)

Add a routine

Check trending/analyze

Next Step

Next Steps

The following steps will be taken to further refine this project:

Personalized recommendation for candy sharing
Although we allows users to share their positive journal, people may still have preferences. We can create different reactions for them to chose, according to the data collected, we can provide personalized candy journal to each user.
Online therapy session
Self-care app is a good start for people to pay more attention to their mental health, while I still think only human touch can solve the real problems. In the future, we may adding online therapy/consultant function to this project.