Lotus mental HEalth

Introduction

In this project for my GD215 class, I was given the task of designing the user experience for a health application called Lotus, given infinite resources and not many other constraints. While it took some time before the application started to take on a purpose of its own, I am proud of the end product. There is some backstory: at the time, I was going through the worst two weeks of my life. I was ending my time as a student, and I was not sure about what was going to happen next.

Competitive Analysis

For my competitive analysis, I compared three healthcare applications together. I did not use the applications themselves for storage reasons, but I discovered three reviews and a case study for a redesign that was never utilized. The three applications I studied where Headspace, Noom, and MyFitnessPal. Summarizing this competitive analysis, I determined three or four things about each application:

• Headspace:
  • The wide variety of guided meditations can be a problem because stress makes choosing hard
  • The approaches that the app provides may not work for everyone
  • The nature of the app’s form of health is different from the other apps examined
• MyFitnessPal
  • The application is more data-driven
  • The redesign of the application I found lacked identity
  • The app is not located in a walled garden and is compatible with many different peripheries
• Noom
  • The application is driven by providing a support system for a fitness journey
  • The app is for a general audience; audiences with more specific needs may need healthcare
  • It is limited by whether or not it works

User Stories

Coming up with the user stories of this was kind of funny. As this was part of a class, I was assigned to come up with 25 user stories, which stretched the imagination in creating them. For naming these things, I think I resorted to naming things after Doctor Who companions and anime/video game characters. This is important because it affected how my personas turned out later. A lot of these were never utilized, but for the purposes of this applications, the ones who were developed into some sort of significant research were as follows:

I want to know where I can get my medications from, information on shortages,
and quick access to a pharmacist.

–Andrew

I want to destress from my job in a way that doesn’t make me dumber.

–Celestia

I’ve begun doing martial arts to work out. I want an app to keep track about my workouts, learn about new opportunities to show off, as well as my ascension through the ranks.

–Bruno

The idea for Andrew was to develop an application that would allow users to, with physician’s permission, to compare prices and availability at different pharmacies. At the time I designed this, there was a shortage of the ADHD medication I take which was frustrating.

The idea for Bruno was to develop an application similar to MyFitnessPal or any other fitness tracker application, but approach it from a professional martial arts position, allowing users to share accomplishments and rankings to a community of fellow martial artists.

Despite these two strong pitches, I chose Celestia as the user I would develop this user experience for. The application would provide various activities that helped one destress without the addictive nature of other forms of destressing content. I was going through a tough time, and I felt that I could use some stress relief. I wireframed all three, then developed the Celestia app into a prototype.

Wireframes

For the wireframes, I combined the user flows with the wireframes to develop them. Essentially, following the arrow would lead the corresponding user through the application towards their goal.

For Bruno, after logging into the application, the thing he wanted to do was log a new win in some local tournament he’d won. For Celestia, the purpose for logging into the application was to listen to some calming music. For Andrew, he wanted to know where he could find a specific medication prescribed to him.

Personas

Developing the personas for the Lotus application was a funny process. Because I had specific fictional characters in mind for the user stories, I found that the details of the personas had to be developed with the fictional universe in mind. Luckily, that is the Danganronpa universe, which is basically the same as ours before The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. So, the creation of these personas were driven by details of the characters, without directly copying for them.

Hi-Fidelity Prototype – MoodBoard and Design System

The moodboard above contains my design ideas for the Lotus application. The logo is meant to evoke the namesake of the application: nelumbo nucifera, also known as the lotus flower. This was pretty easy, given that I had already been given the name of the application in the assignment, so it wasn’t hard to come up with a way to incorporate that into the design.

For the colors, I chose a palette mostly made out of green; while it can be a disgusting color, the natural theme of the application seemed to make it apropos. I chose shades of the color that would be soft and soothing. In retrospect, given lotus flowers are pink and white, I wonder if I should have added more of those colors to the application.

For the fonts, of the selection I had been given, I chose two fonts: Krona One and League Spartan. I chose these fonts because they fit well into the color scheme and ideas I had for the applications.

Hi-Fidelity Prototype

My application provides many different options to destress through two separated categories of what I call Destresses. There are active destresses, which require active participation in efforts to destress. These include:

• Games: mentally engaging activities that have an active win condition
  • Chess – played against computer
  • Backgammon – played against computer
  • Checkers – played against computer
• Workouts: exercises that get the body active and moving
  • Push-ups
  • Situps
  • Leg raises
• Meditations: audio tracks that require actively listening to instructions
  • Freedom – audio track that includes soundspaces and narration that meditate on freedom
  • Death – audio track that include ssoundspaces and narration that meditates on the nature of death
  • Serenity – audio track that

There are also passive destresses, which destress through passive participation. I have included explanations because these are a little distinct from the original. These include:

• Fidgets: satisfying virtual activities that have no win condition
  • Buttons – pressing and manipulating an array of buttons
  • Flowing Water – manipulating and pool of flowing water
  • Gas – manipulating a gaseous mass
• Activities: instructions for engaging mental tasks
  • Magnifique – think of as many words in a foreign language that you know
  • Electronics shop – create a shopping list for an electronics shop
  • Trilogy – think of as many groups of three things that you know
• Music: music tracks that are listened to in the background
  • Calming Lo-Fi
  • Serene Soundscapes
  • Pump Me Up

After users logged into their account, they would be presented with a set of recommended Active or Passive Destresses. To alleviate the problem of the variety, users are not frontloaded with variety. Instead, they are presented with a few categories of suggested activities, and the cognitive load of their choice is focused on what type of Destress that they are using. Users can delve deeper, but the choice of activity is made as simple as possible. There is also a journal that offers users the ability to record their thoughts, and a calendar that allows users to review what activities they have completed on what day.

Conclusion

This is one of the first original applications that I have designed an end-to-end user experience for. I have not tested it, but I did get a note from my professor that indicated an interest in investing. I am not a businessman, so I could not do it. But the potential, the use, it’s there. It makes me feel good about myself.