Aware App | Tina Marie Zeng

AWARE

Role: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer

Project Type: Mindfulness APP

Date: Sep 2024 - November 2024

Background: Aware is a mindfulness application that helps individuals practice our less commonly known eighth sense, interoception. This is the ability to notice and understand the information our bodies signal to us, which in turn helps with emotional regulation and maintaining homeostasis in our bodies. Without it, our bodies would not be able establish a sense of psychological or physiological safety. This application was designed with neurodivergence at the core, but is beneficial for all users looking to feel more empowered through understanding our body's sensations.

Challenge: About 1 in 8 people in the United States are neurodivergent. Studies have shown that people who are neurodivergent tend to have poor interoceptive awareness.

Opportunity: Our mindfulness app will allow users to practice interoception, which will affect people with neurodivergence by providing a safe space to better identify the signals that their bodies are sending. By creating a more accessible application, I can provide them with necessary tools to emotionally regulate and create an overall better quality of life.

RESEARCH

I interviewed 5 mid to high functioning neurodivergent individuals to understand what it means to be neurodivergent, how it impacts their lives, and what they'd like to see in a mindfulness application.

Some questions included:

How does neurodivergence affect your daily life?
What is the best and worst part of being neurodivergent?
What setbacks have you experienced or currently experience with practiving mindfulness?
What would you like to see a mindfulness app for neurodivergence?

It was really critical for me to understand the emotions my users experience being neurodivergent. This way I can identify how to best support them. After the interviews, I created affinity maps to draw common themes between their emotions and also features that they mentioned.

EMOTIONS AFFINITY MAP

FEATURES AFFINITY MAP

USER PERSONAS

To further empathize with my users, I built out two personas after identifying pain points from my interviews.

Pink Maroon Minimalist Aesthetic Simple Presentation (1).png

With the personas, I was able to build out journey maps to visualize the path the user has to take when trying to partake in a mindfulness activity. This highlighted new potential pain points, reduced impact of designer bias, and identified improvement opportunities. The goal is to design an obstacle free path for users.

KEY INSIGHTS

Simple

Maintain simple layouts, colors, images and text throughout the design. Majority of users get overstimulated easy. This will create a safe environment for them to navigate through.

Journaling

Journaling was a highly rated mindfulness activity for majority of users. Users feel more connected with themselves while writing in a journal.

encouraging

Users tend to feel different or isolated. Including affirmations or other encouraging words can help motivate users and help build their confidence.

customize

It's important to create an application that learns from our users and what their potential needs are. This way there can be a personalized experience for everyone.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Through a competitive analysis of mindfulness apps/ apps catered for those with a form of neurodivergence I was able to gather ideas for features and accessibility considerations for my app.

ACCESSIBILITY

Since my target audience has a variety of sensitivities, accessibility has to be considered throughout every step of the process. I researched what decisions are important to consider when designing for neurodivergence. Some general takeaways were:

Ensure large chunks of text are left aligning
All buttons need to have a clear description text or icon
All buttons need to look clickable- apply shadows
Have options to hide or show information so the screen doesn't become cluttered

DESIGN

I started off my design process with a How Might We exercise. Some of the questions were as follows:

How might we take any positives in the problem and use them as solutions?
How might we solve the opposite of the problem we’ve outlined?
How might we completely change the current process involved in the problem?

This helped me reinforce which features from my research were most important to include:

Sign up intake questions to understand our user (Customized Experience)
Sensation Tracking Journal
Customized Activities based on logged sensations
Ability to search for activities without logging sensation (Flexibility)
Daily Affirmations (Encouraging)

SITE MAP & USER FLOWS

SIGN UP TASK FLOW

ADDING A SENSATION

SEARCHING FOR AN ACTIVITY

WIREFRAMES

I started off drawing paper wireframes to try and generate as many ideas as possible. I kept going until I felt like I had layouts that would serve as a solid launching pad. Then we would transfer these designs digitally to begin prototyping.

PROTOTYPING

Here's the low fidelity prototype for adding a sensation.

On the homescreen, you can find your daily affirmation at the top. The "Log a Sensation" button is the largest so that our eyes are drawn to it.

Throughout the check in process I wanted to include additional resources for people who might need it:

For selecting where the user feels the sensation:

You can easily just type, use speak to text, or select from a body map.

When describing the sensation:

I wanted users to type whatever adjective feels best for them. Sometimes these descriptors might not make sense to neurotypical people. What’s important is that it’s catered for the user. In the prototype example, we see the user type “Squiggly.”
For users who need help describing what they feel there is an additional resource button to view a list of sensations.
You can add an intensity rating
You can add a drawing
You can add another word

Once the sensation has been logged, the user is brought to a confirmation page where there is an AI intepretation of their sensation and what this could possibly mean for them. In addition, a list of activities customized to regulate or appreciate the experienced sensation is generated.

MOCKUPS

When creating a design system for my mockups, I wanted to ensure the colors were palatable for my users. I did research on the most relaxing colors to the human eyes and found that blues were often correlating with calm, green is correlated with rest, and pink can be soothing. Harsh complimentary colors can be abrasive for my user profile so I wanted to keep things generally monotone, but play with the contrast. I also pulled in a lot of inspiration from the colors of the ocean. I made sure the colors were WCAG compliant as well.

For the logo, I went with an amorphous shape that weaves these three colors together. Sensations and emotions are abstract and free flowing. It also made sense to go with a simple sans serif typography throughout the design to provide cohesion and easy to read text.

LO FI PROTOTYPE VS HI FI PROTOTYPE

USABILITY TEST FINDINGS

I conducted a moderated usability test with 4 high functioning neurodivergent individuals and 1 neurotypical.

1

TOO MANY OPTIONS

Users felt like overwhelmed on the "Describe the sensation" page. There were too many options to add on with the descriptor. This made the page feel cluttered.

2

TOO MANY STEPS

The check-in flow felt a little long. Navigation could be simpler by reducing the number of steps to log a sensation.

3

RESOURCES

Users appreciated having a body map, list of sensations, and AI interpretation resources available for their use during the check in process.

ITERATIONS

The key insights from my usability studies were applied to my design iterations. New mockups were built out, prototyped, and retested using the same parameters as my previous tests.

I ended up adding email verification to the sign up process to simulate a more authentic sign up experience.

A recommended activity populates on the home screen now. This is based on the time of day and the kinds of sensations the user generally tracks around this time (if there are trends). I also added a journal option was added to the bottom bar for users to access their journal entries and analytics. Users are also able to add any custom entry they want. It doesn't have to be one that follows the check in process. Journaling is such a critical activity for my users, I want to provide them the flexibility to do it however they want.

A progress bar was added for the check in process. Even though there were only two steps, the transparency is important for my user profile. I added keyboards for the search function to show how suggestions will populate for the user. Additional options on the "Describe the sensation page" were removed to declutter the screen. Instead additional functions in the form of an icon were added to the additional details box. Users can attach images or other files.

Users can become overwhelmed if they keep aimlessly scrolling, not knowing how many options they're going through. For the activity pages we included the total number of activities listed at the top.

FINAL PRODUCT

Pink Maroon Minimalist Aesthetic Simple Presentation (3).png

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Understanding and empathizing with your users is crucial. My original app idea actually started off as a goal/task setting app for people with neurodivergence. When I went through my first rounds of interviews, I quickly discovered that these kinds of apps rarely ever work for people with neurodivergence and pivoted my idea. It's easy to assume what the needs of our users could be, but until you actually talk to your target demographic you truly never know.
Accessibility ends up helping everyone. This was the first project where I had to considered a variety of sensitivities in my design. During my usability tests, it was shown that the design decisions I made to make information more accessible for those with neurodivergence also helped those who were neurotypical. Whether it was the text hierarchy, layout or color considerations, these ended up creating a pleasurable experience for everyone.
Simple is better! A decluttered screen is always easier to navigate and digest.
AI can be a useful tool when integrated correctly. I wanted to include an AI proponent to my design to help users navigate the nuance of sensations or emotions. The "View Sensation Analysis" captured this intent. This added support feature received a lot of positive feedback in tests.