Winter is coming — go outside!
Developing an app to motivate people to spend more time outside to improve their mental health.
For my 6th Ironhack project the brief was to design a wellness app, that could motivate people to improve their physical or mental health. As an avid hiker & nature enthusiast I wanted to do something that would help people to spend more time in nature, as it is also proven to improve your mental health.
Initially I was thinking along the lines of helping people to plan out hiking routes or help them with determining the weight of their pack, but as I got into my research I realised people who would be thinking about these things are experienced hikers and are very likely to already spend a lot of time outside. Most people are not actually experienced hikers. They just want to walk around the neighbourhood to clear their mind, but are struggling to find the time and motivation, especially with new lockdowns coming into place and the weather turning to Winter.
My initial survey showed that most people are aware of the mental health benefits of spending time outside, but they are deterred by inclement weather and not being able to make time for activities outside. Through my survey and interviews it became clear that it’s not so much that people don’t want to spend time outside or don’t have the opportunities, but it’s all about priorities: people always seem to have something else to do that seems more important, or it’s raining and they don’t want to go out.
So I decided to focus on the following problem statement: The city dweller needs to find a way to motivate themselves to spend more time outside because they are aware of the benefits it brings them, but they are not able to consistently prioritise spending time outside.
User persona
Based on the survey and interviews I developed my user persona, Maggie Kim, who lives in a big city in a small apartment. She works from home a lot due to COVID-19 restrictions. When the lockdown started she often went for walks around her neighbourhood and really enjoyed it, but she has stopped doing that because the novelty has worn off.
Looking at Maggie’s typical work day, I realised there are actually a lot of touch points: moments in her day when it would be easy to go outside for a short walk. For example, right before she starts working, during lunch, after her work day, perhaps after a difficult Zoom meeting, to clear her head. Research has shown that if people spend at least 120 minutes outside per week, they will start feeling the benefits for their mental health. That’s not even 20 minutes per day.
So there is a lot of opportunity for short walks during a work day, but how to get Maggie to go outside and solve the main problem? For inspiration I looked at a lot of different apps, to see how they were solving the motivation issue. There aren’t a lot of apps that specifically encourage people to go for short walks outside — there’s Pokémon Go, and a Dutch app called Ommetje, and that’s basically it. So I also looked at a lot of apps that motivate people to do other things, like learning a language (Duolingo), or running (Zombies Run, or Runkeeper), to get some inspiration about how to motivate people.
I also ran another survey to find out what type of tasks would motivate people to go outside, and to my great surprise it was actually treasure hunts that people wanted. I did not see that one coming, but it was a result I could work with!
Introducing Squirrel
Taking all the information from my research I went into the ideation phase, brainstorming different ideas and approaches. I quickly decided I wanted the app to motivate people in a fun and friendly way, that the tasks had to be relatively short (to meet the 20 minutes per day), and that people needed to be able to see their progress. I came up with the idea to use a squirrel as a mascot for the app. Squirrels need to collect nuts to get through Winter, so my app users will need to do the same. They will be able to earn nuts by completing tasks outside. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to show people their own progress to motivate them, or really show the squirrel getting hungrier to prompt them to go outside, i.e. Tamagotchi style motivation. So I decided to ask my users, and the Tamagotchi idea was a clear winner!
What I also found really helpful during my research is to ask quick A/B questions on Facebook. I got quite stuck on how to track progress on the user dashboard, do they want to see the total number of nuts they have collected, or do they want to see how well they’re doing compared to the average number of nuts you need to collect every day to get to 120 at the end of the week? I agonised over this for a while and then decided to do some guerilla testing on Facebook and LinkedIn to get quick answers. And that worked really well! A lot of people did a quick vote on the two options I gave them, and many also gave very helpful explanations for why they chose that option, making it a lot easier for me to make decisions for my app.
Visual design
As it’s an app that motivates people to spend time in nature, obviously the main colour had to be green. But which green? And what to pair it with? I decided to use some pictures of squirrels and other nature related things I had found online to get started on this design decision.
Eventually I settled on a dark green, with a dark purplish color for text and a light cream for backgrounds. A bright dark blue would be the accent color.
Next up: the squirrel itself. I spent a lot of time looking at squirrel pictures online, then drawing my own squirrels, to figure out what I wanted the squirrel to look like. This was the most fun part. I very much enjoy drawing and it was really fun to do it for a project! Initially I wanted to use Photoshop or Illustrator to make the digital version of my squirrel, but I had just stumbled upon a few illustrations online that were made in Figma, so I decided to give that a go. And turns out it is super easy to make illustrations in Figma! I will definitely be doing more of that from now on.
Hi-fi prototype
So after all that, what does the hi-fi prototype look like? Let me take you on a walkthrough of the app:
Next steps
Based on the feedback I received from the teachers and fellow students during and after my presentation for this project, there are a few things I’d like to work on next to improve the app:
- Contrast: Is there enough contrast between the colors (especially using a lighter version of the green as background) to make sure everyone can see it properly? This is a very important point and will require further research.
- Some details in the navigation of the onboarding: do you really need both the arrows and a “next” button? Probably not!
- Blue accent color: The bright blue was suggested by a color wheel app as a good combo for the green, dark purple and cream that I wanted to use, and I actually kind of liked its brightness. But a few people commented that it was too bright and too different from the other colors in the app, so this is something I need to look into again.
- Color of the buttons: some are green and some are transparent, I need to make more conscious design choices about these sort of things.
Moving forward
All in all, I’m pleased with this project. Of course there is always plenty of feedback, but design is never finished. I asked that question during one of the first classes, “when is the process finished?”, and the answer was of course, “never”. I laughed, but the more projects we do, the more I realize the absolute truth of this. But it’s a good thing! ’Cause it means we get to keep doing the fun stuff :)
My next step would be to improve the UI design of the app, and then to flesh out its basic features. I’d really like to add the possibility for users to add their own tasks that other users can also do. Also, I’d like to add some sort of messaging services for users, so they can message their friends to encourage them to collect more nuts.
But first, I’m going to go for a walk outside ;)