Case Study: SWELL Tracking App

Week 5/6: Ironhack UX/UI Bootcamp

We were tackling a new topic — tracking apps and data visualisation. Starting from scratch is always a challenging experience, especially understanding the direction and purpose of a project.

However this time I had a lovely project partner Cindy H. Oran to collaborate with and to solve an issue a lot of young and old professionals encounter: Being productive while balancing your physical and mental health.

Project Brief

The goal was to design a native mobile app that would help users track and visualise any kind of data. We chose to look at productivity apps of all sorts and realised it was difficult to keep track of tasks, calendar appointments and getting enough rest and healthy reminders. You would assume there is a solution for this already.

Research & Empathy

Based on our assumption, we were focusing on tracking apps for the next two weeks. Interesting but really tough. There are so many apps on the market already, a real abundance. Niches are getting thinner but opportunities arise when new social trends or technologies are brought to live and coexist.

Keeping this in mind Cindy and I were hesitant to jump on a specific topic and researched some tracking apps we use ourselves to get a feel of what problems could be solved.

Competitive Analysis

We compared several apps on the market such as Windows’ To-Do, WHM (Wim Hoff’s Breathing App), Calm, 8fit and even the the physical 5 Minute Journal by Intelligent Change (which is also highly praised by Tim Ferriss and has an interesting day and evening journal section).

After looking at a number of these fitness, meditation, productivity and diet apps we discovered a first hurdle — there is so much data but no place to gather all.

Shouldn’t there be a collaborative app that allows you to import or at least access some data and visualise it in a compelling way?

Survey

Right now there are apps such as Asana for project management, Windows’ To-Do for tasks and reminders, Forest for a unique gamification of focused time and Mood trackers like Tangerine that use smileys for tracking your emotional level on each day. Finally Calm does not just allow guided meditation but also lets you see a streak calendar and journal after every session. We assumed they are all great apps but were missing key features from each-other.

So our mission began to work on the first survey design and see if young professionals have similar problems of juggling data from multiple tracking apps or any other pain-points. Some fundamental result can be seen below:

The lack of overview really came apparent. In terms of daily reminders we found the following:

After having a close look at the survey results and doing qualitative interviews with our colleagues, families and friends we started collecting ideas on Notion and Figma, combining them with our previous competitive analysis.

Interestingly enough almost all respondents had slightly different mourning routines with particular “most important parts”.
We found more similarities in the overall areas of tracking with

• Activity/Exercise
• Productivity
• Diet
• Mental Health

Also the key areas of feasible daily reminders were

• water intake
• daily walks/breaks
• stretches
• filling your gratitude journal

Defining the Problem

Having a solid understanding what our scope was and what exceeded it was a key learning at this stage. Bite only which you can chew — well we were still hungry!

So first we threw all notes on a value proposition canvas and skimmed away all romantic features while concentrating on the core gain creators and pain relievers described in our survey. Trust the process they said. Well here we go..

Shortly after looking at all the pain relievers and gain creators, we came up with some core features inspired by other apps in the market.

Problem Statement & Hypothesis

We then looked at what Problem Statement would best describe our scenario:

Young professionals need to find a way to sync their core productivity and mindfulness tools because it builds healthy habits, and helps them feel even more motivated when tracking their accomplishments.

and our Hypothesis:

We believe tracking personalised and synced activities for young professionals will achieve our goal of them having a more productive, organised, and stress free day.

We will know we are wrong, when less than ~15% of the users the downloaded the app used the tracking app for less than 3 weeks.

With this in mind we applied a newly learned tool called MOSCOW method which help us categorise into Must Haves, Should Haves, Could Haves and Won’t Haves. Must Haves included:

• Sort (priority) function
• calendar sync
• day & hourly reminders
• sub tasks
• shareable/collaborate
• AM Greeting
• PM Summary
• personalised data dashboard
• daily reminders

User Persona

In order to have a more specific target audience in mind we also defined our Persona “Sophie” giving our users a face and a realistic story.

Ideation from our Learnings

After our User Persona we started doing a User Flow & Site Map and started sketching our first visions of the home screen.

The first flow was a simple creation of to-do list and basic navigation flow of the most fundamental to-do list feature.

The second flow on the other hand reveals more extensive core functions of our MVP with the daily healthy recording, data history and also the nightly journaling and review of the day.

User Flow

Doing extensive research and clearly defining our scope helped us build a certain image of how the app should look like. And so we got to sketching.

Mid-Fi Prototype

Some of our early versions between low and mid-fi prototypes included a modular system of cards in the home screen allowing the user to access her calendar, todays (urgent) to-do and further navigate through all lists horizontally while recording and tracking daily activities (water intake, breaks, stretches & steps) vertically.

We then went on to extend our focus on the data history / tracking section. The 2 elements on the left and in the centre where later taken out and redesigned after another round of testing and interviews. The My History overview was kept and refined however on the weekly view.

A vast amount of time was spent creating the Mid-fi and adjusting according to 3 feedback loops. The focus here was heavily based on the statistics and the added benefit our app would supply in comparison to other options on the market.

Moodboard & Brand Attritubes

While diving into the prototype we also created two Moodboards keeping our following Brand Attributes in mind:

Motivated, modern, mindful, productive & friendly

19 out of 22 respondents then decided for the left version and we could finally add some life to our UI design.

High-fi Prototype

While we mainly concentrated on functionality and feedback during the Mid-fi phase we were now able to convey more emotions and visual communications with our iconography, colours, imagery and data visualisation.
We were also dedicated to create a darkmode for revisiting your day in the evening and filling in a gratitude journal.

Often times data is presented in a very boring and unexciting fashion, however we set our goal to changing your life and tracking progress in an exciting manner and spreading a positive attitude. Data can be warm indeed and is a great source of motivation and affirmation for your progress.

After presenting the app to our class we mainly got final feedback about improving our UI. Some design choices such as shadows, colour combination and thickness of journalling lines were among the frequently mentioned points to improve. Have a look at final outcome yourself below:

Key Learnings & Next Steps

We were very pleased with the outcome and also grateful for the honest feedback from all different kinds of potential users. There was and is a big interest from the people we interviewed.
A big learning for me was discovered during evaluating the surveys and understanding the many possible morning routines and personal preferences from every individual user.
Also quickly building and scaling an idea was extremely valuable in order to avoid personal design choices, doubt and truly focussing on the users needs.

Some next steps if we continue the projects would be updating the UI and revisiting the Hi-fi prototype to make it appear more balanced and harmonious. Finally it would be useful to release a beta version for some users and let them test the app for at least 30 days and see if it can significantly improve their lives.

Thanks for taking your time and please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. What do think and would you use the app yourself?