Psychological Technologies is a tech startup with a focus on wellbeing and self-development. They have previously worked on a number of B2B wellbeing and HR solutions for corporate clients. When I joined the main focus was to launch the Anxiety Solution, which was their first B2C app. Many parts of the content and lots of features were already in place and our challenge was to eliminate the majority of user experience problems and add all additional features that were important for the MVP. I also needed to expand the style-guide provided by an external agency and create final designs to achieve coherent and delightful visual experience for the app.
My role was a UX/UI designer and I worked directly with Nick (a former head of research at Headspace) in a team that consisted of a product manager, a UX researcher, a head of content and two developers.
We were focusing on launching a wellbeing app based on the Anxiety Solution book which would be our MVP/POC for launching a larger scale platform with courses based on books by famous authors like Adam Grant, Daniel Pink, Johann Harri and others. It included a wide set of features like wellbeing and habit tracking, many meditative and reflective practices, journaling, assessments, courses and more. Some of these features were included in the MVP to be tracked and tested on real users over time.
The prototype for the app was developed, however there were certain blocks for the users, and our task was to identify those blocks and solve the UX issues with user testing. Together with product managers we took turns to facilitate the user interviews.
Would be nice to be able to build on my previous answers, if I am coming back to the same practice again and again...
In the practice part, there were a lot of 'answer' boxes and seemed a bit overwhelming, would be better if they appeared in stages...
To make sure we’ve aligned the business goals and the users needs, we needed to balance the limited resources of the start-up and the newly researched list of pain points. During the brainstorming sessions, my role was to advocate for the users, analysing and providing a user’s viewpoint on which features might be a priority for inclusion into the MVP.
The user testing confirmed my hypothesis that we had too many features that would need to use notifications. We identified the core ones based on our users personas and their goals and needs. To solve the problem with notifications, we had to refocus on the core features of the app and streamline the rest.
I redesigned the flow of the sessions to remove the awkward back-and-forth movement and introduced a linear flow of the screens. I've also worked out the functionality for the returning users.
With the new practice flow we wanted users to feel calm and relaxed. I paid special attention to the design of the text fields and text input experience.
Every morning and evening users would answer simple questions to visualise the day ahead and reflect on their day to end it on a positive note. It was a perfect way to bring users to the app regularly to encourage their engagement and collect data for the wellbeing tracking.
The style guide provided by an external agency included many styles of Proxima Nova font and had a limited range of colours. My task was to find a free alternative for the font and create a more robust style guide with a refreshed colour scheme and a new logo (wordmark).
I also introduced the UI component library to be used by the product managers and the dev team. My task was to set up a library in Figma and train the members of the team on how to use it and how to apply UI library best practices.
As I was working for a start-up, I had a wide range of responsibilities, one of those was designing and building marketing websites for various courses including the Anxiety Solution
It was a challenging year for many of us in so many ways. It was great to hear that our app helped a lot of people to manage their anxiety and feel a bit calmer and happier. The app was also featured in a number of articles focused on mental health during the pandemic in 2020.
I absolutely love this app. There are daily routines that start your day in the right frame of mind and wind down your day...
This beautiful app is the daily nudge I need to help me back on track and stay there...
I have found this app great for helping me deal with anxiety on a daily basis. It’s so accessible and easy to use...
The focus of the project was to launch MVP for a Wellbeing App that helps people who struggle from anxiety. The MVP included a wealth of features like a 28 day anxiety course, 40+ anxiety tools, daily reflections and journaling. So far the app received great reviews from users and investors, which allowed the company to raise £1.5m in funding for the development of the new wellbeing platform.
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Notifications are OK, but not too many, i.e. if I can tailor how many I receive and when that’s fine. Headspace were notifying me all of the time and it was too much...