BioBalance
A mobile app designed to encourage mindfulness and life balance through physical activity and mental health tracking, self-check-ins, and reward-based habit building.
MY ROLE
I was part of the pitch team and responsible for the experience strategy and design of the iOS app. I lead the UX work, producing all major deliverables and presenting these to the client within a 3 month timeframe.
Background
The problem was the overwhelming number of platforms and excessive information available. My friends and I struggled to filter through the vast amount of fitness and nutrition content online, and most apps lacked personalized fitness routines. This inspired me to create a comprehensive app that integrates habit formation, workout tracking, nutrition, and biofeedback, offering a holistic view of one's lifestyle. To validate these challenges and needs, I conducted user research.
Current competitors.
THE CHALLENGE
Design a Dynamic Fitness and Mental Health Wellness App in 3 Months
My goal was to make it as easy and simple as possible to get personalized, positive, high-quality information to guide individuals to make better physical and mental health decisions.
My high level goals were to:
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Provide an all-encompassing platform for mental and physical health information and routines
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Provide targeted, personalized support/recommendations
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Track metrics in order to see trends
THE APPROACH
Focusing on Individual Goals and Lifestyles
Although the main brief was to develop a more holistic and functional app than the competitors, I decided to focus more on user goals and lifestyles rather tahn providing more features to address user needs as precisely as possible.
To differentiate ourselves in a competitive and mature market, I needed to determine how exactly our app would best meet the needs of the users.
THE COMPETITION
How Do Others Best Maintain User Engagement and Provide Value?
I wanted to see how other apps in the space were providing value to their users. I looked at competitors like Loom, Fitbit, and Headspace, which all addressed a particular niche and user goal (meditation, physical fitness, weight-loss) to determine their target demographic, strategies used for user engagement, insight into how they addressed their particular user goals.
DEEPER INSIGHTS
Talking with Users
The target demographic of most of these apps had users ages ranging from 18 to 65, which was a broad range of ages. Since my app was so all encompassing, I thought my app would be able to appeal to a similar age range demographic. But first, I wanted to learn more about my target audience’s lifestyle and learn exactly how they prioritized their mental and physical health. I did this by creating a survey and collecting 39 responses from my target audience: individuals who consider themselves physically active between the ages of 18-65.
Survey of lifestyle and general physical and mental fitness habits.
Lack of time, motivation and too much stress
Delving deeper revealed some key insights into individuals mentalities toward their lifestyles.
Most individuals (75%) did not find it difficult to balance their physical and mental health with their lifestyle. But, of the individuals that did struggle, they struggled due to lack of time, motivation, and too much stress. People also used step and fitness trackers to stay engaged, with 58% of individuals saying they use their trackers daily.
On the mental health side, less than 30% of individuals participated in mindfulness, citing lack of time and motivation as their main obstacles.
THE PIVOT
Narrowing the Scope
After surveying, I hit a snag: most respondents skipped the explanatory questions on how exactly they struggled to balance their lifestyle. In addition, motivations for staying active varied significantly by age and activity type. To further investigate, I noticed that 80% of those who balanced their lifestyle well were between 30 and 65 years old. This led me to pivot and narrow the scope to physically active individuals aged 18-30 in my interviews to better understand their motivations and challenges.
INTERVIEWS
To gather more in-depth, qualitative data, I interviewed nine individuals aged 18-30 and organized the insights into an affinity diagram with nine categories, focusing on physical and mental activity, skill, self-awareness, organization, and motivation. However, I found the initial categorization unclear and overlapping. To improve clarity, I reorganized the diagram hierarchically, starting with broad categories and refining them into more specific concepts that better illustrated the connections and causes.
Affinity diagram motivations, stressors, and productivity issues.
PERSONA CREATION
After reorganizing my affinity diagram, clear patterns emerged among physically active individuals. I noticed that those who were less active had significantly different motivations compared to fitness enthusiasts and athletes. This insight led me to create personas based on activity levels—moderately active, very active, and extremely active—based on weekly workout or sports participation.
MAPPING OUT THE JOURNEY
Determining Touchpoints to Best Address User Needs
After creating personas, I mapped out each one's journey to identify pain points for feature selection. For my first persona, Cameron, a med student struggling with time management, I identified several key pain points:
1. Rushed mornings prevent her from mentally preparing for the day.
2. Constantly being on-the-go hinders her self-awareness of hunger, stress, and exhaustion.
3. Physical and mental exhaustion from tennis increases her risk of injury.
4. Constant stimulation disrupts her ability to relax and sleep.
5. She lacks time to research resources on balancing life better (sleep, stress, nutrition).
Cameron's main issues are time constraints, followed by a lack of self-awareness and motivation to improve her mental and physical health. These insights guided my feature analysis, helping me prioritize features based on the severity of issues across person