Blossom, find what helps you reach your center.

Blossom Prototype

Overview

Project Name

Blossom

Project Name

Blossom

Project Name

Blossom

Project Name

Blossom

Project Type

Case Study

Project Type

Case Study

Project Type

Case Study

Project Type

Case Study

Duration

3 months

Duration

3 months

Duration

3 months

Duration

3 months

Role

UX/UI Design

Role

UX/UI Design

Role

UX/UI Design

Role

UX/UI Design

Tools

Figma

Tools

Figma

Tools

Figma

Tools

Figma

Introduction

The COVID pandemic had everyone around the world change their day to day lives. There have been increased reports of depression and anxiety during and after the pandemic. With the world today, we cannot say it was the same as it was before the pandemic. Adjusting to the new normal can be stressful and overwhelming.

With the internet, it has never been easier to discover ways to perform self-care and increase overall mood and promote positive mental health. With these in mind, how can one incorporate self-care activities into their busy schedules? Introducing Blossom, a productivity website used to help users incorporate self-care activities through-out their hectic days. Blossom aims to provide a way for users to find time in between their day to day tasks to care for themselves.

Problem

How can we create a service that helps our users incorporate self-care activities in their daily lives?

Potential Users

those with mental health conditions
those with busy schedules
want to develop a self-care habit/routine

Necessity

Research has suggest that performing self-care activities promotes positive health outcomes.

Competitive Analysis

For my competitive analysis, I chose Aura, Calm, and Headspace. I noticed that all of the apps have rounded UIs and use blue, yellow, and orange colors. The apps all have search functions, so if I wasn't sure if the app had a specific feature, I would just searched it. All the apps have a paywall that prevents access to almost all the features. These apps all have basic features such as guided meditation, stress reduction, guided breathing exercises, but others are truly exceptional.

While Calm, which is the most popular among all of these apps, has all the basics, I noticed that virtually everything in the app has a paywall. The app felt more like a money sink than a mental health tool. It felt friendlier when I was not constantly bombarded with the paywall, but they all had most of their features behind a paywall as well. In terms of "I am a mental health app", Headspace stood out most. Unlike the others, the friendly UI places an emphasis on mental health. Aura is the most feature-rich. As soon as you open up Aura, you're prompted with the paywall. Other apps showed a quote or asked you to breathe as an intro screen. Aura's main focus is their pool of mentors, which can be accessed through booking sessions, which are not part of the monthly fee. A really cool feature I liked was that they had live events that educated their users on mental health practices. My least favorite UI is the Insight Timer. The app felt less engaging and honestly, I didn't want to spend a lot of time looking through it. I really liked the fact that Insight Timer emphasizes community, which I didn't find in the other apps. It's common for these types of apps to use blues, yellows, and oranges in the UI and to have rounded corners.

All of these apps share similar features, but there seemed to be too much information at once with all of them. Headspace does a good job of addressing that. The cheapest option is Aura, but you have to pay separately for the coaches, even though they offer a free session.

User Interviews

Who did I interview?

I wanted to find individuals who were passionate about mental health and have had experience with developing a skill they use for their mental health. I gathered 6 participants who were

Ages 25-34
Passionate about mental health
Had developed a skill for their mental health

I wanted to find individuals who were passionate about mental health and have had experience with developing a skill they use for their mental health. I gathered 6 participants who were

Ages 25-34
Passionate about mental health
Had developed a skill for their mental health

What were my goals?

During these interviews I wanted to find a way to help users overcome their hindrances of performing self-care activities. My goals for these interviews were

Identify what motivate people to perform self-care activities
Identify reasons what stops people from performing self-care activities
Identify what methods of self-care activities are easy to perform, and which are unrealistic.
Understand what draws a user to keep engaging in a mental health service.

During these interviews I wanted to find a way to help users overcome their hindrances of performing self-care activities. My goals for these interviews were

Identify what motivate people to perform self-care activities
Identify reasons what stops people from performing self-care activities
Identify what methods of self-care activities are easy to perform, and which are unrealistic.
Understand what draws a user to keep engaging in a mental health service.

What did I discover?

The one of the main challenges I faced was getting broad answers for the questions, which lead me to believe everyone has their own view of self-care and mental health. It was difficult to find similarities in what they were stating about self-care and mental health, but I saw these patterns while interviewing.

Participants were less motivated to perform self-care activities when they've had a hard day

Users did not have enough time to perform self-care activities

Another reason I saw that I thought was related to not having enough time, is not prioritizing self-care activities

Personas

Johnathan states that he is starting to feel burnt out. He says that he barely has any time for himself and that the feels as if he's going to shutdown.

Introducing, Blossom

With Blossom, I wanted it to feel friendly, welcoming, and easy to use. I wanted when users who were going through depression or anxiety, or any other mental health issue, they would not be apprehensive or hesitant to use the service. Here's how I tried to achieve this with the branding of Blossom.

Color Palette

The color orange can invoke feelings of

optimism, warmth, and welcoming.

The color orange can invoke feelings of optimism, warmth, and welcoming.

The color green can invoke feelings of balance, serenity and joy.

orange

Dark Green Blue

The color dark green blue can invoke feelings of

love, joy, and inner peace.

The color dark green blue can invoke feelings of love, joy, and inner peace.

I need a darker color for the text and I decided to use a lighter shade of black for it to be easier on the eyes.

A pure color white can be a bit harsh,

so I chose to add a hint of orange.

A pure color white can be a bit harsh, so I chose to add a hint of orange.

off-white

charcoal

I need a darker color for the text and

I decided to use a lighter shade of

black for it to be easier on the eyes.

I need a darker color for the text and I decided to use a lighter shade of black for it to be easier on the eyes.

Font

Arsenal

Nunito Sans

Icons

Logo

For the creation of the logo, I honestly had a difficult time on what I should create. I made a few sketches and asked friends and family which logo they enjoyed the most, and this was the one that all chose.

Components

Hi-Fidelity Usability Test

I conducted usability tests with 5 participants to tests these tasks:

Account creation
Adding & editing an event
Confirmation of self-care activity.

I wanted to know if these tasks were easy for the user to complete with low number of errors while completing. Here is some of the feedback I received from these participants:

After creating the first hi-fidelity mockup, I once again conducted usability tests. The tasks I had these participants do were similar to the tasks I had my mid-fidelity participants do. During these tests, I had created a scenario for each of the task and I had my participant be an adult child who was looking to place their mother with dementia in a care home.

Scenario:

Your name is Melissa Mason and you are looking for a care home for your 67 year old mother with dementia. Your mother has been using a walker for a couple years now and is often confused. Although being confused, she can feed herself and use the toilet on her own, but needs some assistance bathing. She also needs assistance in taking her medication for hypertension and her Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Whenever she has free time, she enjoys to read while sitting in the patio.

You are browsing through applications in the AppStore and download an application called Senior Serenity. You download the application and when you first open it up, it greets with with the welcome screen. You want to use the application, so you want to create an account.
After creating your account and finishing the assessment, you start scrolling through recommended care homes. You are interested in the care home named Senior Sunset. You tap on the care home, and start looking through it's pictures and decide you want to request a tour.
You scheduled your tour and start scrolling on Senior Sunsets details page. After reading it's content, you decide you want to message the care home.
After sending your message, you remembered your mother having difficulty reading some road signs while driving her to her doctors appointment. You want to edit the assessment.

I had 5 participants with ages ranging from 23 to 51. All tasks were completed with minimal feedback. Creating the final mock-up I had less changes compared to the mid-fidelity to hi-fidelity. Here is some of the feedback given:

Changed icon to Add

Participants mentioned about having text instead of icons for certain actions, such as the add button.

Tappable date and time

Upon observation, I noticed users would tap on the time and date while editing, so I decided to make these elements tappable when editing,

A look through all the screens of the final mock-up.

I was happy with the out come of the testing. All users completed the tasks and had minimal feedback to give. In the future, I hoped to carry these habits of design over to my next project.

Blossom Prototype

Final Thoughts

This was my first project in DesignLab and I had not known how much time I would be needing to put into the bootcamp. I really enjoyed working on this project because it showed me what my strengths and weaknesses were throughout the process. During project, life events had happened and it was difficult to manage life, work, and DesignLab at the same time, but I'm proud to have overcome it! I learned a lot about time management, and time allotment while going working on this project. I hope to continue to learn more as I start working on more projects in the future!

Let's get in touch.

You can reach me on social media.

Behance

Dribbble