End to End Application
UX Case Study
DesignLab UX Academy
Improving users' ability to maintain routines by gamifying motivations
For this project, Design Thinking was used to design an end-to-end application.
WHAT I DID
design process
research
Understanding the current competitors and the users’ goals, frustrations, motivations, needs, and wants to clearly define the problem.
define
Define a clear problem statement and the user that I will be designing a solution for.
ideate
Designing solutions that would address the problem statement.
Prototype
Prototyping the minimal viable product (MVP) that users’ could interact with during testing.
Test
Testing the MVP to understand users’ overall experience with the MVP and using metrics to uncover any improvements to the design.
PROBLEM
Users have trouble Maintaining a routine to establish habits.
According to Forbes, a study collected from Statista showed that approximately 80 percent of people give up or fail within the first 30 days of setting resolutions or building new habits. Although it’s easier to start the process of building a habit, maintaining a routine that will transform into positive habits is where most people tend to fail especially when some habits may require more time than others to be completely established.
stay accountable with a pocket buddy from enrich!
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Select a buddy who will join you on your journey.
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Solidify your main goal to establish healthy habits with your buddy.
Get rewards for every action you complete.
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Earn coins and unlock achievement items for each task, entire routine, and habit goals that you complete.
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Failure to complete your routines will put you at risk for losing your rewards.
connect with friends to build habits together!
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Create group habits to hold each other accountable and accomplish them together.
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Keep track of the group progress and earn rewards for maintaining those routines and habits!
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS + THE GAP
The competition only catered to a specific audience.
RESEARCH + DEFINE
Keeping in mind of the problem, I analyzed three popular direct competitors that uses gamification to build habits. I found that the competitors mostly catered to a specific gaming style, such as fantasy role-playing games (RPG), which limits to users who were already interested in that gaming style. In addition, 2 competitors have not updated their user interfaces in 1 to 3 years, which prevented users with newer devices to utilize the apps without issues.
USER INTERVIEWS AND SURVEYS
what are the users’ current behaviors to establish habits?
After completing my competitor analysis, I wanted to understand users' current behaviors. I conducted 3 user interviews and collected 8 surveys from users who previously failed to establish a habit, currently maintains a routine, and/or use habit trackers and management apps. Questions were asked to understand users’ current behaviors to establish habits, why some habits failed or were successful, and how the habit app should work for them to continue using. The data was synthesized through thematic analysis then grouped by current behaviors, motivations, frustrations, and how the habit app should work.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Motivations include reminders of the potential results and instant gratification.
Across all users from interviews and surveys, users want to maintain a routine to establish habits so that they can lead a better quality of life for themselves. Their main source of motivation to continue a routine is being reminded of the potential results. However, being able to see small results and get an instant feeling of accomplishment are what keeps them going.
Main factors that discourages or prevents them from maintaining a routine are lack of accountability, lack of self-motivation, and poor execution.
The habit app MVP should include:
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Customization capabilities, such as notification settings,
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Good organizational layouts, and
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Some form of reinforcements and rewards.
via GIPHY
USER PERSONA
Meet Selena singh, a graphic designer who is trying to live a balanced lifestyle.
After synthesizing my data from interviews and survey, I created this user persona to better understand who I will designing for the habit app MVP. By understanding my user persona’s goal, frustrations, needs, wants, and motivations, it allowed me to make better design decisions that best resolve their current problems with maintaining routines.
PATTERNS + TASK FLOWS
HOW does the habit app currently work for other competitors?
IDEATE + PROTOTYPE
When it was time to ideate designs, I wanted to keep my user persona in mind as I was thinking through how the task flows should look like, so I reviewed Habitica and Habitify to understand their design patterns and how their app worked. In addition, I also analyzed Apple’s iOS Calendar to understand their design patterns. Analyzing different patterns allowed me to determine how to create the task flow for the habit app MVP. Keeping the patterns in mind, I explored different designs for the MVP to bring the task flows to life. Few of my sketches can be viewed here.
DESIGN THE USER'S JOURNEY
Enrich, add value to your life one habit at a time.
When a first-time user downloads the Enrich app, the user should be able to the following:
go through onboarding with ease
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Register for an account and select their character to join the user's journey.
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Establish their habit building goals.
Design Decisions:
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User can only select from four characters as “starter buddies” to make the selection process simpler and users will be able to unlock new characters throughout their journey.
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Allow the user to type out their main goal to solidify why they want to establish habits for themselves.
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Include a short slideshow to visually show how the app works at the end of the onboarding process.
Set up routines, habits, and to-do’s
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Easily add any routines, habits, and to-do’s that needs to be completed.
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Customize routines, habits, and to-do’s by frequency, tags, notification settings, and more!
Design Decisions:
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The user interface and patterns are similar to Apple's iOS Calendar app to ensure familiarity and ease of use for iPhone users.
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The user’s main goal are fixed at the top of screen on every screen as a constant reminder for the user since that is a main source of motivation based on user research.
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Since this is the user’s first time setting up the app, they will be rewarded instantly. Each success will trigger an instant overlays and cute animations each time they earn a reward to evoke a feeling of accomplishment.
earn (or lose) rewards
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Check off routine items with ease and earn rewards.
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Skip routine items, but risk losing hard earned rewards.
Design Decisions:
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Make checking off completed items extremely easy by having the user tap each item. Tapping action require less energy and movement to accomplish.
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Make skipping items very difficult by introducing swiping actions and “are you sure” overlays before items are skipped. Adding resistance to skipping items should deter users to want to skip items.
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Ensure skipping actions have higher penalties than earning rewards to evoke pain or lost of earned rewards for failing to complete a routine item.
Create Group Habits with friends and earn rewards
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Easily keep yourself accountable by having your friends join and complete group habits.
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View and track the group’s progress with ease.
Design Decisions:
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Have a separate section for social activities to promote a sense of community and social accountability.
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Allow each group to view their own dashboard to better track progress and add more than one habits under each group for simple and better organization of different groups.
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All routines, habits, and to-do’s, including group habits, are located in the same spot, Routine section, for easier access.
TESTING + IMPROVEMENTS
Where can I improve my design?
TEST
I collected 5 unmoderated usability tests to test whether the designs of the Enrich MVP were easy to use, the tasks were easy to complete with good accuracy, and the users were satisfied with the overall experience. The average rate of the overall user experience while using the Enrich App was 4.5 out of 5.0.
Final prototype can be found here. Usability testing debrief can be found here.
Below are 2 major improvements to the design:
Reduce cognitive load.
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The onboarding process took an average time of 67.2 seconds for users to complete due to the amount of text required for the user to read.
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Few screens had a reduced amount of texts available.
Before
after
Reduce confusion.
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There were some confusion in two task flows (Social Section and Add a Routine) which caused a high misclick rate.
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Clear labeling of buttons and additional How-To overlays were added to reduce confusion.
Before
after
THE FINAL SCREENS
THE FINAL PRODUCT
CONCLUSION
Actionable steps
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Continue iterating to improve the Enrich app MVP, such as adding screens of the Explore and Profile Section, solidifying the achievement and rewards systems, adding additional flows of unique features, and improve the animations of the MVP.
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Ideate and design the users’ experiences for other Apple devices, such as desktop, laptop, and watch, for a more seamless experience.
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Adapt the iOS design to an Android design for Android users to have access to this app.
read other case studies
Enrich
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Improving Users' Ability to Maintain Routines By Gamifying Motivations
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Increasing Customer Engagement on Netflix to Improve Customer Retention
JustBc
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Improving the Order Process from Instagram's Direct Message to E-Commerce Website
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Improving the Online Experience of E-Commerce Platform
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For this end-to-end application project, my biggest challenge was designing an MVP in the amount of time allowed for this project set by DesignLab UX Academy. Due to the strict time constraint, I made design decisions based on what I could accomplish in the most efficient and effective manner as possible. My design decisions would not be the same if I had more time-alloted to this project and would have overall improved my designs.
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In addition to the strict time constraint, my lack of experience and understanding of gamifications impacted my ability to better design gamification elements for this project. It was a risk to learn gamification concepts in a short amount of time and apply it to the designs. For this project, I did my best to learn the basic concepts and use patterns from mobile games that I was already familiar when designing the MVP. In an ideal environment, I would dedicate more time to understand how to apply gamification concept better for my MVP.
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Illustrations of the characters makes the Enrich app unique and personal since they are the user’s pocket buddy on this journey. Since illustration requires more time to design and require unique and creative skillsets, I opted to find existing illustrations to reduce time spent on illustrations. If time was not a constraint, I would develop an illustration or have an illustrator help design my four starter characters and develop better backstories.
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Microinteractions were extremely important to help the users to feel immersed in the experience during usability testing. With the time constraint, I decided against using a more advance prototyping platform for this project because it would take time to learn a new platform. To be efficient with my time, I opted to create simple animations on Figma for efficiency. For future iterations, I would put in more time to include sounds, human-computer interaction concepts, and complex animations for a more immersed experience.
challenges + lessons learned
Roles and Responsibilities
Roles
Product Designer
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Interaction Designer
Tools
Figma
Miro
Maze.co
Duration
2 weeks
BACKGROUND
what are habits?
Habits, whether they are good or bad, shape who we are, our attitudes, actions, and decision-making abilities that impacts every aspect of our lives. A good habit will help you reach your goals, develop both personally and professionally, and feel fulfilled. Habits are driven by reward-seeking mechanisms in the brain. They’re often triggered by something specific. After a while, habits become a repetitive part of your lifestyle. Forming habits is the brain’s way of being more efficient. (Source: BetterUp)
Roles
Product Designer
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Interaction Designer
Tools
Figma
Miro
Maze.co
Duration
2 weeks
OVERVIEW
Roles and responsibilities
stay accountable with a pocket buddy from enrich!
-
Select a buddy who will join you on your journey.
-
Solidify your main goal to establish healthy habits with your buddy.
Get rewards for every action you complete.
-
Earn coins and unlock achievement items for each task, entire routine, and habit goals that you complete.
-
Failure to complete your routines will put you at risk for losing your rewards.
connect with friends to build habits together!
-
Create group habits to hold each other accountable and accomplish them together.
-
Keep track of the group progress and earn rewards for maintaining those routines and habits!
SOLUTION