Anteater Wellness App
Refining the approach to promoting health and wellness awareness to better address the toll on students and demand on student health centers.
User Experience Designer
April 2022 - June 2022 (10 Weeks)
Figma, Miro
Overview
What strategies can we use to effectively promote on-campus health events and improve personal wellness for undergraduate students, while optimizing the use of resources at the wellness center?
User Research
Stakeholder Elicitation
As part of our mobile app development project, our team collaborated with stakeholders from the UCI Health and Wellness Center over a four-week period.
During the first stage of our collaboration, we conducted elicitation sessions with the center's staff to gather information on the goals and requirements of the Anteater Wellness Application.
Although we were not provided with prior research conducted by the center due to confidentiality concerns, we used the insights gained from these sessions to develop a comprehensive product perspective. This included identifying product functions, user characteristics, general constraints, assumptions and dependencies, and apportioning of requirements.
In addition to these findings, the wellness center staff provided us with requests for both functional and non-functional requirements for the application. Specifically, the Anteater Wellness Application was envisioned to foster continuous progress in the mental health and overall wellbeing of UCI students.
User Identification
The primary users of the Anteater Wellness application are UCI students, both graduate and undergraduate, who are currently enrolled at the university. The application's functionality is designed specifically to improve the health and well-being of these students. It provides a valuable resource for individuals who seek to enhance their physical, emotional, intellectual, financial, social, and spiritual health. The Anteater Wellness application offers personalized wellness assessments, goal-setting tools, and access to wellness-related events, making it a comprehensive resource for students committed to improving their overall health and well-being.
The UCI Wellness Center staff is responsible for posting UCI-affiliated wellness events on the app and encouraging student participation. They may also interact with student users by commenting on posts and providing feedback on their wellness progress. In addition, staff members may use the app to connect with students who may require further assistance or support in enhancing their wellness. The system generates reports on user engagement, goal completion rates, and other relevant metrics to assist staff members in improving the effectiveness of the app in promoting student wellness.
The UCI Office of Information Technology is responsible for maintaining the technical infrastructure and ensuring that the Anteater Wellness application is functioning correctly. Their responsibilities may include server maintenance, database management, troubleshooting technical issues, and updating the application to ensure compatibility with new devices and operating systems.
Surveying Students
To gather a better perspective on the scope of the issues, I sent out surveys to students attending the University of California, Irvine. The main goal of these survey was to understand the health & wellness status of students across the campus as well as their awareness of health-related events hosted by the health and wellness center.
Understanding the application requirements, identification of the apps users was essential to further design the features and functionality of the application as a whole. This was identified within our software requirements specification document and further mapped within a domain model.
Constructing the Survey
After gathering a sample of students that met the user characteristics, I sent them a brief 12-question survey to lay the foundation of my knowledge of the problem. Some of these questions included:
Survey Results
With a sample size of 24, the survey revealed highly insightful information of health & wellness and campus events.
Personas
Based on my surveys and elicitation sessions, I visualized the relationship between students' experiences with health and wellness and the goals of the Wellness Center. To ensure inclusivity for all students, I created a persona for each of the main student types I encountered.
Brainstorming
Competitive Analysis
Initially, I conducted market research to identify similar applications and their feature sets. Since this particular application focuses on improving students' mental health through event scheduling and health tracking, I specifically looked at the main features of mental health, events, and goal tracking apps.
Studying these key areas, I gained a better understanding of the functionalities and design patterns that have proven to be successful in similar apps. I realized the application would have to incorporate some of these distinct features to make is practical for the students to use.
The competitive analysis revealed that the Anteater Wellness app should incentivize wellness categories by tracking the status of each with a virtual indicator. Progression through the categories could be achieved by attending events listed by the wellness center, with each event associated with a specific category or set of categories.
Other notable findings from the competitive analysis suggested the idea of forming a network or community of students who share similar health interests. I believe that providing inclusion within software is crucial and have identified an entry point to make this apparent in the application.
Deriving Design Goals
Based on the initial elicitation sessions and surveys with the Wellness Center staff, our team drafted a goal model that identified preliminary goals of the application: foster relationships between students, encourage students to achieve personal wellness goals, connect the Wellness Center staff with students, and increase Wellness Center event participation
After identifying the market gap, I generated goals for the product. When crafting these goals, I prioritized the biggest concern for students: creating and maintaining health awareness in a way that actively unites and uplifts their wellness goals.
Studying these key areas, I gained a better understanding of the functionalities and design patterns that have proven to be successful in similar apps. I realized the application would have to incorporate some of these distinct features to make is practical for the students to use.
Wireframing
User Flow
With the design goals outlined, I began sketching basic user flows for the main features of the application: logging into the application for the first time, creating a wellness event, registering for a wellness event, suggesting a goal, and adding a goal to your goal list.
When drafting user flows, I often choose between flow charts and wireframes to display the tasks the user flows. For this scenario, I aimed to create an information foundation to understand the events in each process without being preoccupied with minor details. For a project with fewer user flows to consider, I would opt to use wireframes to visualize the process.
The software requirements and specification documentation includes a dedicated section for usage models that expands upon all use case scenarios, diagrams, and descriptions. Each use case description considers actors, preconditions, end conditions, triggers, basic/alternative/exception flows, and relationships to other use cases.
Prototyping
Stylistic Decisions
When deciding on the style of the UI, I carefully considered the product environment that this application would live in. It was obvious this product would need to fit within UCI’s traditional colors of blue and yellow. A light shade of blue was chosen as the primary accent color to create a sense of trust and calmness, while a golden yellow was chosen as a secondary accent to add vibrancy and warmth. Blue is easy on the eyes and won't cause any unnecessary strain, making it an ideal choice for long periods of use. By using blue and yellow as accent colors, the application will feel familiar and welcoming to students who are already familiar with the university's colors.
To complement the color palette, the font Poppins was selected for its modern and clean aesthetic. Poppins is versatile and easy to read on various devices, making it an excellent choice for displaying different types of information. The font's fresh and contemporary feel aligns with the application's overall objective of promoting health and wellness among college students. Additionally, the use of Poppins creates consistency throughout the application and helps to establish a recognizable visual identity for the brand.
Displays
The events page showcases all events available to student users. Students can easily access this page to view and add featured events to their registered events list, and receive updates and notifications regarding those events. The events posted by the Wellness Center are uniquely categorized to align with students' wellness needs and goals, and are designed to help them make progress on their wellness wheel.
The community page functions as a central hub for students to discover and join communities that share similar interests. Each community is associated with a primary wellness category that the Wellness Center promotes by providing additional resources and related events. This helps to further support students' holistic wellness journeys by connecting them with like-minded peers and relevant resources.
The goals page offers a variety of suggested goals for students to schedule and accomplish. In addition, students have the flexibility to create their own goals and categorize them based on the various dimensions of their wellness wheel. The Wellness Center provides personalized goal suggestions based on the student's current status in their wellness journey.
Every user on the platform has a personalized profile page that displays their wellness wheel, which is a composite of various health metrics. This unique feature provides students with an indication of their overall wellness status and helps them identify areas that may require attention.
Reflection
Strong User Connections Produces Good Design
I found great satisfaction in designing this health and wellness product for a community that I highly value. Throughout the design process, I prioritized the needs of the users, keeping a user-centered approach at the forefront of all design decisions. By closely considering user pain points and personas, I was able to create a product that is tailored to the needs of the students who will use it.
Improving health and wellness is an important personal goal of mine, and I was able to channel this passion into the design process. While no design is perfect, I am proud to have solved the design problem in a way that will provide tangible benefits to the user community. I was able to create a product that is both functional and effective.
Maintaining The Scope
Through elicitation sessions held over the first four weeks, it became clear that catering to every stakeholder request was not feasible. My field notes quickly became a long list of feature descriptions, which seemed overwhelming at first. However, after conducting a survey with UCI students, I was able to identify the most feasible features that could be completed within the given timeline.
I found this challenge to be particularly valuable, as it provided me with a greater understanding of what is realistically achievable within a given timeframe, and how to prioritize quality deliverables. By focusing on the most impactful features, I was able to achieve a balance between the project timeline and the final deliverables. Overall, this experience has enhanced my ability to manage stakeholder expectations, prioritize deliverables and make decisions that result in a successful outcome.