BUILD-A-KIT

A web experience designed to help students explore new methods of self care.

Role: Product Designer Timeline: Jan - May 2021

Team: Designers (4) Tools: Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, Microsoft Teams

BACKGROUND

College students often suffer from stress. While some students may have a handle on their mental health, other students have no idea what it means to relax and have some peace of mind. There are many useful organizational or stress management apps exist to help us manage our work loads, but it gives people one more excuse to be on their phone. Our challenge will be to meet the needs of students with varied methods of self-care through technology or service. 

CHALLENGE

• Creating a service for individuals who all have incredibly varied and personal approaches to self-care

• Having our service reflect a process of discovering unique modes of self-care

• Narrowing down our problem scope

 RESEARCH

Surveying Georgia Tech Students

We wanted to collect data and conduct interviews with current Georgia Tech students in order to better understand the audience we were designing for and helping. However, we were aware that not every student had the same experiences or interests in design, and different learning challenges may occur for different students.

Thus, we conducted semi-structured interviews and collected numerical data on a Google Form survey. From there we learned that:

• People deal with stress through a variety of means

• There was no consensus in our research

• Individuals all have incredibly varied and personal approaches to self-care, and we want our service to reflect a process of discovering unique modes of self-care

and general activities students do to relieve stress include:

• Physical activities

• Meditation

• Spending time with friends

• Watching shows

• Reading

• Listening to music

• Socializing

Understanding the User…

We want our service to appeal to the range of Georgia Tech Students that are experiencing high-stress would be able to receive a package:

• Local and International

• Off-campus and on-campus

• Male, Female, and Other

• All socioeconomic status

• Atheist and Spiritual

• Queer and Straight

• Stressed out, high anxiety

PERSONAS & SCENARIOS

Key Insights from Storyboards

Based on our finds, we learned that some packages might not work for people, and while they might be okay with receiving a surprise package, everyone’s response to a mindfulness practice will be different.

• Our survey at the beginning should be as thorough as possible

• Using a mail service means there will be a delay, do we offer other activities for the user while they wait?

• Some people will have pre-exposure to mindfulness activities, and know what they are looking for

• Maybe we ask people in the survey if they only want to receive packages they select, or if they want our service to recommend a package and send it to them

• Users will be using our packages the most when they are stressed and in a bad mood

• We should make the fonts and colors soothing, or pleasant to look at

• In Eric’s example, however, we don’t want a package to come across as ‘girly’ or ‘manly’ because both men and women might sign up for the service, and they may not want to feel like they will be judged for receiving a package that appears gender-specific

Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Using the research as a guide, we explored different solutions through low-fidelity prototypes.

PROTOTYPE 1

PROTOTYPE 2

PROTOTYPE 3

PROTOTYPE 4

PROTOTYPE 5

Heuristic Evaluation and Design Iterations

 Final Product: High-Fidelity Prototype

FEATURE 1: BROWSING KITS

Where to Start

• When the user first uses opens the kit, they are able to use the browsing option and search for kits out of the many options to choose from.

• This allows for personalization and for the user to find choices that cater to their needs

• By clicking on a kit, the user is granted a more in-depth description of it as well as the featured items included in the kit.

Feature 2: WELLNESS SURVEY

One of our unique features

• Users can take a survey that asks about their overall wellness

• Users’ responses will generate a list of recommended kits that they can learn more about or purchase

• Taking the survey is not necessary for buying a kit, but it is essential for our personas that do not have a lot of experience with wellness activities and do not know where to begin

FEATURE 3: ORDERING A KIT

After selecting a kit

• Users enter their delivery and billing details

• Users review shopping cart and order details

• Users will get a confirmation screen after ordering

FEATURE 4: HOME & ABOUT PAGE

Standard Features

• Home Screen

  • Includes our main features: browsing kits and wellness survey

  • Additional content that considers the users’ wellbeing, such as wellness articles

• About Screen

  • Includes our founding story and an explanation of our product which builds trust and comfort

FEATURE 5: PROFILE & LOGIN

About Me

• Users can edit their profile allowing the kit to be personalized to their needs. This includes adding information like their name, username, email, and phone number as well as preference.

• The profile page also shows a list of the kits they have purchased, an brief, one-question review of the last kit they received, and a link to the survey results

• A login feature is also featured granting security to the app.

Link to Figma File of Prototype: Prototype

Link to Interactive Prototype: Interactive Prototype

Insights from High-Fidelity Prototype Critique

From our Cognitive Walkthrough results, we made the following changes for our high-fidelity prototype:

• Added consistent next/back buttons

• Log in: removed the pre-filled information and prompt users to sign up if necessary

• Home: added interactions to every section on the page

• Survey: added next buttons & color coding

• Kits: took away filtering options, able to click on a kit to learn more about it

• Order: added a subtotal per item in shopping bag, able to delete items from the bag, able to order kits from all kits page now

• Profile: corrected navigation links, edited the design hierarchy to provide better clarity, refined color scheme

Overall, these changes made our high-fidelity prototype clearer and more accessible. All results from the cognitive walkthroughs were addressed, and changes were made accordingly in order to provide a more refined and effective product.

Final Reflections:

REFLECTIONS ON OVERALL DESIGN PROCESS

• We learned how important it was to tie our research into every step of the design process

• We learned about the value of user testing which can reveal flaws in our design

• We learned how to work together as a team to create a complete product based on user research

Areas for Improvement

• Creating the prototype at the same time as the cognitive evaluation did not work, because we did not know how to write out each step

• We didn’t spend any time creating a style guide or thinking about the color scheme or shape choices, so there is no reason for any of the decisions we made in that sense

• Creating the Figma seemed disorganized, we did not fully utilize components which led to extra time spent on it, and we did not know what screens we wanted to make when we began working on it

Challenges Faced

• Coming up with an interactive experience for resilience and self care that could be carried out on a fully virtual platform

  • Overcome by brainstorming individually and as a team to think of a service that filled this need

• Finding times to meet virtually as a team

  • Overcome by taking a poll of what days/times worked for team members’ schedules and selecting the meeting time best for everyone

• The initial misunderstandings we had of the rubrics

  • Overcome by discussing the assignment with Sara to clarify our initial misinterpretations

• Lack of familiarity with Figma for some team members

  • Overcome by these team members adding more content to screens while team members with more knowledge of Figma added interactions/animations

• Emphasizing the Survey portion of our service in the prototype without making this a requirement

  • Overcome by incorporating the Survey into various screens but allowing the option of browsing and buying kits without completing it

Next Steps

If I had more time during this project I would:

• Expand our kit options beyond the 8 we have right now

  • Given more time and iterations, we could expand our kits to include other popular hobbies such as listening to music, knitting, etc.

• Provide a customizable subscription option where they can choose how often they want a box sent

  • This addition could make it easier for users who get easily stressed

• Include a “surprise me” button for users who do not know what they want