February - April 2021

Fruto Studio Mobile Prototype,

UX / UI Designer

Overview

During 2021 I was tasked with identifying one key health issue for a population group, conducting user research and designing a mobile application prototype.
Initial ideation and brainstorming was performed in a group before splitting to develop a series of individual prototypes.

Process

  • Ideation
  • Initial Data Gathering
  • Personas
  • User Journey Maps
  • SWOT
  • Design Research
  • Prototyping

Tools

  • Figma, Adobe Illustrator
The homepage for a prototype mobile webapp called Simply Sleep

Ideation

Using padlet, we brainstormed a series of health issues - establishing common issues before expanding on each issue to deepen our options. Following this process, we drafted two elevator pitches and chose our favoured topic - sleep deprivation issues for students.

A brainstorming of various different ideas

Data Gathering - Interviews and Data Matrices

Following ideation, we comprised a list of interview questions to broaden our knowledge and experience of our chosen issue.
Data gathering took the form of 9 user interviews, which were transcribed and plotted into a data matrix. Thematic analysis was then performed to locate common sentiments, frustrations and goals.

Personas

From our thematic analysis, we constructed three personas for our intended user group - students. Our personas drew upon the goals and frustrations previously identified and the personalities reflected three distinct types of student with differing mental states.

A fictional mid 20s persona is displayed alongside information about him.

User Journey Maps

Next we constructed three user journey maps to identify user expectations, actions and emotions at certain points throughout their use of a healthy sleep app.

The user journey map for the previous persona is displayed

SWOT

I performed SWOT analysis on a series of competing healthy sleeping apps, using a combination of personal trial and user reviews. I identified the similarities between these apps and found a potential niche to capitalise upon with my own design.

Strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for a list of different companies SWOT analysis example of one of the companies resarched

Design Research

As I had not designed a mobile app prior to this project, I next performed comprehensive contemporary research into articles exploring different design decisions.

I learnt about developing menu sizes for the average finger radius, how the way a phone is held alters the way that certain audiences use an app and the value in minimalist design. This helped influence my initial mid-fi prototype using Figma.

After acquiring feedback for this initial design, I turned back to my research and focused on a clearer flow of information and higher contrast while retaining the core feature identity.
You can test out the final Figma prototype here!

First draft for the Simply Sleep webapp using Figma First 5 pages of the Simply Sleep webapp Remaining 4 pages of the Simply Sleep webap An example of how the app responds to the time of day and notifies the user

Conclusion

During this project I learnt a great deal about designing for mobile, the many constraints to consider and the importance of displaying the right amount of information in such a small form factor.

I also began my first forray into using Figma and was pleasantly surprised by how well it functions for creating interactable prototype applications.

I definitely left room to improve and would perform even more design research were I to work on a similar project. This could include the introduction of mood boards and a deepened knowledge of graphic design theory.