Welcome to Olive
A wellness app that encourages users to plan, initiate and discover the things that de-stresses and bring joy to their lives.
Problem
Millennial and Gen Z user’s needs a way to take control of their own physical and mental well being.
We all know it’s important to prioritize mental and physical health. But let’s be real. Accessing affordable healthcare could be out of reach for many millennials and Gen Z users. For those who want to maintain healthy and well balanced routines, life often gets in the way and self care is neglected.
Practicing self care is crucial to maintaining healthy, balanced lifestyles. We will know this to be true when we see people using Olive App daily as a source of mental rejuvenation and as a way to plan, initiate and discover the things that de-stresses and brings joy to their lives.
The Solution
Olive aims to encourage users to prioritize their wellbeing and offer a platform to connect with health experts.
Create a platform that has multiple methods of self-care strategies.
Encourage users to take time out to prioritize wellness through challenges.
Provide users with an accessible way to connect with wellness professionals.
Create an interface that is engaging, interactive, and easy to use.
Competitive Analysis
S.W.O.T Profiles
I started the project by conducting a competitive analysis on two health and wellness apps, MindDoc and WebMD. I wanted to analyze apps that helped users track their mood as well as offer health and wellness information and resources. The goal was to gain an understanding of the objectives, strategy and market advantages of these applications.
Key Takeaways
By conducting the competitive analysis, I concluded that to create an experience that would help users invest in their wellbeing, I needed a combination of unique features that allows people to interact with the app daily, provide a variety of resources yet not overwhelm users with information, and to create a clean, inviting, simple interface that’s easy to navigate through.
User Surveys
I created a survey to understand what my target audience were doing to address their wellbeing. 50 people participated in the survey.
User Survey Goals:
To better understand users lifestyles and habits.
To gain an understanding of users mental wellbeing before and during the global pandemic.
To collect data on how users address their mental health concerns.
To collect insight on what features of Olive App would be useful to users.
User Surveys Insights
My target market were millennials and Gen-Z individuals. I found that most were employed. Understanding how working individuals manage a work/life balance can help define how Olive can become a bridge to maintain that gap. I found that majority of participants were feeling their mental wellbeing was something that needed to be addressed pre-pandemic.
Connecting with friends and watching Netflix are users main hobbies and exercise and meditations are main strategies for people looking to maintain their mental health. In addition, I noticed that my target audience were reaching out to friends, family, and partners to address their emotional wellbeing instead of wellness professionals. I wanted to explore why that was and followed up with this point during interviews.
Based off of participant responses, I found that Millennials and Gen-Z users are particularly interested in video-based content followed by a way to track their feelings. Focusing on mental health and strategies used to address these realities, adding video content on health and wellness and offering ways for users to track their moods, stay consistent with journaling and healthy habits are what I discovered needs to be implemented when designing Olive.
User Interviews
I conducted user interviews with five participants. The data I collected was organized and analyzed using affinity mapping where I observed the behaviors, attitudes, lifestyles, frustrations and needs of participants regarding their health and wellness.
User Interview Goals:
To better understand users lifestyles in relation to their physical/mental health state.
To discover patterns regarding where users turn to address mental wellness.
To discover what brings users joy in their daily lives that help improve their mood.
To collect valuable insight on users needs in a health and wellness application
User Interview Key Insights
Users put their own mental wellness in their hands or in the hands of those closest to them because seeking professional help is either inaccessible or often times considered taboo in their households.
Exercising, eating healthy, and having alone time are ways participants prioritize their wellness yet often times, they lose the momentum.
Work, social interactions, and health concerns are the main sources of participants stress/anxiety.
Participants tend to handle their mental health/wellness on their own or turn to friends, family, and online resources for help as seeking resources like therapy often feels out of reach.
Participants prioritize themselves by doing activities that are solo, from journaling to taking time away from work and friends to recharge.
Olive’s Four Key Features
Based off user surveys and interviews, I created a platform with four key features:
A place to challenge users to maintain their habits and prioritize themselves weekly.
A way to reflect.
A way to connect with wellness professionals in an inexpensive way.
A place where users can explore curated resources on health and wellness.
User Personas
Consolidating and personalizing research into User Personas
To better understand my user and create solutions that directly applied to their needs, I created user personas that reflected the needs and lifestyles of those I surveyed and interviewed. I also created user flows to map out the step by step the journey in which users will take to accomplish such task.
Journey Maps
Journey Mapping .
I created journey maps to illustrate the process in which my persona Izzy might take while interacting with Olive to accomplish a certain goal. I imagined the thoughts and emotions that Izzy would experience as she sets out to reflect through Olive’s Introspection feature and the steps Enide would take to challenge herself to self-prioritize.
Site Map
Based off my persona’s journey maps, I solidified the information architecture of Olive and created the site map for Olive.
The Ideation Process
Low-fidelity wireframes.
Having completed the research stages of the process, it was now time to design initial solutions. I designed wireframes and a journey flow for my user persona, Izzy.
“Izzy wants to take some time to log onto Olive app and use the Introspection feature where a list of questions that prompts self-reflection are presented.’’
Hand-sketched wireframes allowed me to quickly map out ideas that I later was able to refine in the next step of the design process.
Mid-fidelity wireframes.
Hand-drawn sketches for Izzy’s task were translated to mid-fidelity designs refined digitally on Figma.
Mid-fidelity wireframes (Refined & Images added)
Layout and design iterations were made in the mid-fidelity stage after discussions with team. Images and details were added to get prototype ready test with real users. Testing detailed mid-fidelity designs instead of low-fi sketches helps test participants understand and connect with the product more.
Test to Improve
Planning usability tests are just as important as conducting actual tests.
In preparation to test my product, I created a usability test recruitment email and sent it out to gather participants. I gathered 6 volunteers and I made a usability test plan and script to help organize the sessions. I conducted 4 moderated remote test on Zoom and 2 moderated tests in-person.
Task Scenarios
You need a way to pause the rush of life and take some time to self-reflect. How would you go about doing that?
You want to be intentional about prioritizing yourself. How would you go about finding a challenge to do just that?
You had a great day and want to document your mood and how you’re feeling.
You have some free time and want to learn about holistic wellness. Where would you go on the app to find this information?
You want to review your past journal entries. Where would you find your entry history?
Usability Tests Results
I organized feedback with affinity mapping and organized data with a rainbow spreadsheet.
Insightful feedback was gathered from usability test and organized with affinity mapping. Using a rainbow spreadsheet, I gathered errors, observations, positive and negative quotes to further analyze usability tests results.
Improvements were made based off test feedback.
Preference Tests
Having users involved in the design process through preference test helped solidify design decisions.
For this preference test, I tested two versions of Olive’s Explore screen. The original explore screen (Preference A) was categorized in a very simple and structured format. For preference B, I created larger thumbnails that made the page look more organic and would be easier to navigate through.
Results:
From the 12 participants who took the preference tests for the explore screen, 25% liked Preference A and 75% preferred Preference B. The difference in results are significant and definitely shows that Preference B of Olive app will perform better.
Final Design Solution
High-Fidelity Wireframes to Final Prototype
After gathering feedback and considering accessibility guidelines, I finalized the high-fidelity screens of Olive. The iteration process continued after sharing with UX mentors, refining the design, sharing prototype with Slack community and taking into account accessibility guidelines.
Olive Home & Menu Screens
Reflect with Guided Introspection Feature
Track Mood & Connect with Wellness Experts
Olive Prototype
Press play and interact with Olive Prototype below.
Olive Style Guide
Final Thoughts
What I learned
Having a work/life balance, prioritizing oneself and maintaining health and wellness goals is what my target users want to achieve but needs a push to keep consistent. Olive was created to help guide those needs into useful solutions. I incorporated UX processes from affinity maps to organize feedback, journey maps to create compelling user stories and deliver customized experiences, as well as card sorting, which allowed users to be involved the information architecture of Olive.
I learned that planning research is just as important as conducting research. Having interview recruitment emails ready, along with a test plan, script, and questions at hand makes the process run smoothly.
Lastly, I discovered that the iterative process is ongoing. I was able to see the evolution of Olive from initial concept to end design in the form of high-fidelity wireframes and prototype. Through further testing, insight from team, and added features, Olive can continue to improve as being the source of wellness for target users.