A health management app that helps users set and achieve goals related to water intake, exercise, and sleep.
Today, there are a wide variety of health and fitness apps, ranging from diet to running trackers. However, I noticed the lack of a simple and effective way to track multiple health metrics all in one app, making it difficult for users to holistically evaluate their health.
Research shows that more than half of adults in the US don't drink enough water. Just 28% of adults are meeting physical activity guidelines set by CDC, and about a third of adults don't get enough sleep every day. Many are simply too busy or don't remember to keep up with these health habits.
After gathering quantitative data online, I discovered that overall, Americans express low satisfaction with their fitness, weight, and overall health levels, as shown in the chart below.
To gain a more detailed understanding of health habits, I conducted 6 user interviews. Staying physically active and maintaining healthy diets and sleep hours were common priorities among the 6 users. I tried to understand their motivations behind adopting healthy lifestyles and their experiences with tools in order to identify any key pain points that hindered them from effectively building health habits that last over time.
Half of the users have used MyFitnessPal, a popular health and fitness tracking app, to record their food intake in the past. However, all of them did not like their experiences on the app, stating that the food list wasn't comprehensive enough and that they often felt anxious about precisely tracking their diets on a daily basis.
It became clear that diet apps are primarily effective for people who eat very consistent home-cooked meals. For other people who frequently eat out, dissecting their full-course meals quickly turn into a hassle.
A common theme among the users was that the health apps they used weren't very engaging and didn't teach them new things. In health apps, users wanted to feel cheered on and learn the benefits of their health goals, the "why" behind what the apps told them to do.
While current health apps got the jobs done (keep track of users' diet, exercise, and sleep intake), they didn't provide users a lot of incentives to stay engaged.
Prior to devising potential features on Momentum, I wanted to take a look at what competitors offered and to identify possible areas for improvement.
I discovered that while all the health apps provided useful ways for achieving health goals, each app served a particular purpose such as exercising or drinking water. There wasn’t an all-in-one app that accommodated a user’s various needs for achieving a balanced healthy lifestyle. Additionally, most of the competitors did not have fully-developed social features that kept users engaged on the platforms.
My research helped me define the target audience, painting a clearer picture of who I'm designing this app for and guiding me throughout my design process.
The research key takeaway is that users want an engaging platform where they can effortlessly set and achieve their health goals, engage with their friends, and acquire new knowledge.
Utilizing my research findings, I brainstormed potential features while keeping the target audience's goals and pain points in mind.
Plotting all the potential features on a prioritization matrix helped me narrow down my focus to what was most relevant and impactful (given time constraints), color-coded in green on the right of the diagram as high-priority.
Referring back to user interview pain points, I decided to design a water intake tracker instead of a diet tracker. The water diary would inform why water intake is important and track users' water consumption.
Since the profile tab I had in mind displayed personalized statistics and data visualizations for the user, I wanted to find the optimal way to present it. I created 2 versions of the profile tab and asked users what they preferred.
The majority of users expressed their preference for option #2 – the horizontal carousel slider for showcasing their stats. By positioning graphs this way, users can readily see how the graphs relate to one another and avoid too much scrolling.
The goal of my app is to help users lead healthier lifestyles by providing a platform where they can set and achieve health goals amidst friends. To encourage and motivate users, I chose electric purple, which radiates mindfulness, a sense of inner peace, and transformation.
As a user of health apps, I empathized with other users' pain points and sought to make users' health journeys as easy to start and as smooth as possible.
I conducted a round of usability testing to determine whether or not users were able to navigate through Momentum and complete the following tasks:
1) Sign up as a first time user
2) Log a drink of water
3) Record an exercise activity
4) Track sleep
I consolidated the frustrations and brainstormed solutions so that I could refine my designs accordingly.
During the water intake goal setup in onboarding, users felt swayed by the initial design to lower their water intake level since there wasn't ample space to adjust up. To encourage users to drink more instead of less, I lowered the starting water amount and raised the upper limit.
My initial design for logging a drink of water allowed users to adjust water amounts by increments or decrements of 100 ml. However, as I received more feedback, an issue that surfaced was: what if user A wanted to log tiny sips of water as they go about their day and user B wanted to log one big drink at the end of the day?
To accommodate users with different types of water logging tendencies, I decided to incorporate a water amount slider that enabled users to swiftly log both small and big drinks.
Based on earlier testing, users indicated that they preferred the swiping carousel, a less scrolling and more compact format, for viewing their stats. However, a concern that users brought up during subsequent testing was that the carousel made it initially obscure how to access their stats. To address obscurity from pagination dots, I re-designed the carousel and decided to conduct A/B testing to assess the new version.
A. Pagination dots – Users can transition between different stats for water intake, exercise, and sleep via pagination dots on bottom of section
B. Tab switches – Users can transition between different stats for water intake, exercise, and sleep via labeled tab switches on top of section
A. Pagination dots
Users found it relatively difficult to pin point what each dot represented
Success rate: 63%
B. Tab switches
Users were able to intuitively view their desired health chart
Success rate: 97%
After A/B testing, I incorporated labeled tab switches to the user's profile page. The updated designs are shown below.
Here's the final prototype for Momentum where users can delightfully set and achieve health goals alongside their friends and discover personalized insights about their progress and health habits.
82% of potential users expressed interest in using Momentum, describing how the app would make their health journeys more seamless.
This project played a pivotal role in my growth as a designer, challenging me to consider edge cases and to conduct multiple rounds of little tests to assess my design choices, which revealed crucial insights beyond one round of usability testing.
Moving forward, I would love to conduct more research on data visualizations to find out how to present them to users meaningfully and concisely. To increase app engagement, I would also like to further explore and develop the social feature on the app and gather more feedback and insights from users.
