Design Thinking Process

To create Olive, the Design Thinking Process was used to structure different work stages into sections. 

Understand

I started off getting a hang of the task at hand, what’s expected by me, and finding out what’s out there in the form of similar health apps. Is there a place for Olive?

I did competitive analysis on the apps that I found that were closest to what I had in mind for Olive. This gave me a good insight to the market.

Observe

In the observation phase, I did user research by conducting interviews with a limited group of potential users.

What would they be looking for in an app that will focus on their mental health? I made an affinity map based on their answers, and one thing that stood out to me was that a majority didn't know where to begin. So this is something I will bring with me, moving forward. Along with the rest of the answers, of course.

These findings from my potential users, in combination with the competitive analysis, helped me see that there is a place for the unique twist Olive can deliver to the market.

Point of View

Having a rough understanding of my users, I created two user personas, Monica and Alicia, to represent the two most polarised sides of my interviewees, to help me understand Olive from their point of view.

Monica is a bit sceptical and more negative towards a health app. She doesn't know where to begin, is there any use for it for her? Alicia is more into using apps in general, and is already thinking about her health. She is more open to the idea of using an app to support her healthy ways.

This is one area where being a roleplayer since my early teenage years, and being knowledgeable in psychology and personalities, helped me a lot with putting myself in the shoes of my user personas.

Ideate

With two personas to design for, it was now time to create some basic user flows and wireframes based on the information I had at hand, and also try to think if there is anything I can add or do differently from the competitors. What will make my app stand out? A version of Paul J Meyer's Wheel of Life is not something I have seen used by many apps, so this shall be the foundation of Olive.

The Wheel of Life will help the users to see, in glorious technicolour, where work is needed to find a balance in life. 

This should be a good starting point, and the solution to the main problem my interviewees had; not knowing where to begin. 

It will also be something against which they can measure their own long term progress.

Prototype

I created a low fidelity prototype, to carry out more usability testing. Before even reaching the testing stage, I found that my idea of using submenus to keep the screen as uncluttered as possible was just annoying; it added an unneeded step in the navigation, so this was addressed before the usability testing commenced.

Test

My first usability test gave me valuable insights about both my prototype and my potential users. The most glaring mistake I made was putting the “Library” icon in the top right corner, without a subtitle. I put it there as a temporary measure, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the menus,  got used to it and forgot about it. This is a glaring example in how easy it is to become blind to your own omissions, and how important it is to take a step away from a design every now and then, and get a few more set of eyes to look at it. This error was caught early on during the user testing phase, and with each design iteration, backed by research and testing, the UI of Olive got more and more polished.. 

The process was of course not as linear as this presentation makes it out to be. It was a constant moving between the different stages and sections, as so fittingly demonstrated by the design thinking diagram at the TOP of this document.

Give Olive a try by clicking here.