inBalance
Finding a balance that works for you.
Project type
Mobile-first, end-to-end product
Role
Research
Branding
UX/UI design
Timeline 5 weeks
Overview
Implementing healthy lifestyle choices and creating a routine around them comes easier to some than others. Depending on one’s home life, career and other factors, it can be challenging to find a routine that not only works, but also maximizes the user’s time and benefits. A product that curates a toolbox of various resources can educate and motivate the user while alleviating those feelings of being overwhelmed.
TL;DR: Users need a way to implement and maintain a routine of healthy lifestyle habits that works alongside their current commitments and responsibilities. Achieving a healthy work-life balance while finding the time to prioritize their own well-being.
inBalance is all about finding a healthy work-life balance and emphasizing the importance of making time for yourself. With a survey designed to relieve any feelings of overwhelm, inBalance takes aspects of your daily life, curates a plan designed just for you and provides the tools and resources necessary to assist you along the way. After all, life is a balancing act.
“I feel better at the end of the day when I have a routine where I’m physically active and feel like I’ve accomplished something.”
— Jon, interview participant
Research
I needed to identify the challenges potential users were facing in maintaining, reimplementing or beginning a routine of healthy lifestyle choices in order to understand what types of solutions could be most beneficial. I conducted a competitive analysis of the following existing products:
While these companies have large databases, they’re known to show up short in terms of accuracy due to their crowd-sourcing nature. These large databases also cause users to find it time consuming and often overwhelming to sift through the content.
Taking a look into the health and wellness industry as a whole revealed that there is an increase of prioritization of health and wellness, and that users find personalized health and wellness platforms attractive.
Research goal:
To understand what challenges potential users face in maintaining, reimplementing or beginning a routine of health lifestyle choices so that we understand what type of resources will be beneficial across all levels.
Research objectives:
Understand why people have a lapse in or fall out of routine
Understand the challenges of getting back into routine
Understand what provides a source of motivation and encourages self-discipline in individuals
Learn what resources are available and how they are utilized or were utilized in the past
I interviewed five participants ranging in age from 28-40 years old who had either fallen out of their routine or found it hard to maintain one. These interviews were done remotely via Google Meet.
What did I learn from these sessions? I learned that users…
like the sense of accomplishment but need a way to be held accountable
could save time with a personalized experience that streamlines the information displayed based on their personal goals and needs
feel less overwhelmed under the presence of structure and guidance.
“If it's not something I set time out to do, I'll find an excuse not to do it.”
— Tande, interview participant
Through affinity mapping, I was able to organize the interview findings and get a better visual understanding of the weight of the challenges and pain points users were facing. It seemed to come down to three main issues: time, credibility and cost.
Now I’m able to start defining the problem…
I’d like to explore ways to help users who struggle with work-life balance and find it hard to incorporate a routine of healthy habits in their day-to-day life because they end up sacrificing their own well-being to meet other demands.
See where opportunities lie by asking how might we…
help busy individuals prioritize incorporating healthy lifestyle habits into their schedule?
help individuals who struggle with work-life balance find an engaging routine that fits their schedule?
create a personalized experience for users with specific needs and goals?
Which brings us to…
The problem:
Forming and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices can be intimidating whether you need a nudge to get back on track, help to stay on track or don’t know where to start. Users need a platform that takes aspects of their everyday lives and individual goals into account and creates a personalized experience by providing beneficial resources in an approachable and thoughtful way.
I created two user personas to capture the core needs and frustrations of the target user for use as reference throughout the design.
Define
I began to brainstorm solutions under a time constraint and narrowed it down to two ideas.
Smart Planner: Option to link personal calendar to optimize timing among other responsibilities and commitments
Lifestyle Guide: Virtual (or real?) health professional who learns your habits and preferences to create a personalized plan and provides guidance
I decided to stick with the Lifestyle Guide as a feature concept. The Lifestyle Guide emphasizes the importance of making time for yourself, takes the user’s lifestyle into account and helps to maximize and prioritize time while also satisfying these project goals:
Attract new users
Increase user engagement
Provide a source of revenue for the business
Help users feel less overwhelmed
Educate users on health and wellness topics
Motivate and provide accountability
To see how the Lifestyle Guide could be utilized in a real-world scenario, how it could be implemented and how it could impact the user, I sketched a storyboard.
I decided on two tasks to focus on for the scope of this project and created user flows for each. Starting a New Plan seemed like a no-brainer since the plan (Lifestyle Guide) is the backbone of this whole concept, and Add a New Goal as I learned through the interviews that users like to have a goal to work towards and see it as a form of motivation and accountability.
Next, I created task flows. One for starting a new plan…
And the other for adding a new goal…
Design
I started with key screens based on each task flow and sketched a couple versions of each screen.
While bringing the low-fidelity sketches into digital mid-fidelity wireframes, I initially split the survey by the categories of “Getting started,” “Work life,” and “Home life,” between three different screens.
Then I decided that given the length of the survey, it would streamline the flow and create a more responsive design by having it all on one screen.
Testing with mid-fidelity wireframes
After taking some time to watch tutorials on how to create a drop down list interaction for the prototype, I conducted five remote usability tests via Google Meet.
Users were asked to complete two tasks:
Add a new goal of “drinking 72 ounces of water per day”
Start a new plan by taking the survey and selecting “Option 2”
In the very first step of the flow for “add a new goal,” users were not sure where to even begin. This was a very humbling moment for myself to witness. When I went back through the session recordings, my mistake became clear. By starting the flow on the “browse goals” screen, users were just kind of dropped into the experience and were looking for the literal first step of adding a new goal, which is most likely why they attempted to select the header “Add a new goal” rather than scrolling to find the hydration goal. In future tests, I would begin this flow from the home screen to establish a clear starting point.
Turning this mistake into an opportunity, I prioritized the following revisions:
emphasize information hierarchy
include an “add a new goal” feature on the home screen
On a more positive note, users had nice things to say about the phrasing on the survey portion expressing that it was straightforward and they didn’t feel overwhelmed.
“The questions were well phrased and organized in a way that made it easy to choose one and not get stuck.”
— Meagan, usability test participant
The balancing act of branding
Before bringing these revisions into high-fidelity, I began thinking about the branding and visual design. Knowing that this whole product is about finding a healthy balance, the name inBalance really resonated with me, especially as a play on its counterpart “imbalance.” I wanted a color palette that was bold, motivating and welcoming, so I put together a moodboard for inspiration.
I pulled colors from smoothies and fruits as I feel they are a good (and colorful) representation of health and wellness. These colors felt powerful enough to evoke a sense of motivation and empowerment while instilling a positive vibe that encourages growth. As far as the logo goes, it was inspired by one of inBalance’s core values, growth, which led to the flower-like design. Having determined these visual design elements, it was time to breathe some life into the wireframes.
I incorporated aspects of the inBalance brand and made the following revisions for the high-fidelity wireframes:
Added buttons to the goal cards
Better established information hierarchy
Added a search feature and “View all” CTA’s to the goals screen
Added a “Custom goal” card
Reflection
This process included a lot of firsts for me and I truly believe that I learned from all of them. While the first round of usability testing had a bit of a rough start, I could identify where the mistake was made and how to avoid it in future testing. This is where I learned first hand that we can get so close to our work, and sometimes it takes watching someone else try to navigate through the design to realize where mistakes may lie.
Being my first project, I can say that it laid a good foundation for me to build upon in developing, improving and maintaining research, branding and general UX/UI skills.
Next steps
Test with the high fidelity frames and make revisions as needed
Build out key screens for other features
Test, iterate, repeat
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