How might we help people achieve their goals while incorporating mindfulness practices to reduce mental stress and empower users on their path to personal growth?

Most often people who find themselves struggling with their mental health find it challenging to stay motivated and focused to achieve their goals or create better self-improvement  practices due to the worries and pressure of  their everyday life.

Often many make a plan to create habits or goals but often abandon them due to a lack of clarity they have in themselves or lacking a system for accountability. I wanted to explore ways to influence adults to develop healthier self-development habits.

In the end, I optimize the in app experience through 2 rounds of iteration of the tested designs. This resulted in a robust app that not only meets users where they are but also guides them towards their personal growth goals. The integration of thoughtful design elements ensures that users feel motivated and supported, transforming their journey of personal growth from a challenge into a path of inspiration and achievement.

By testing 6 features within the MVP, feedback revealed that all 6 participants found that the app's design could make the processes of journaling and goal achievement  both engaging and easily accessible

As this project was part of a Graduate Capstone course there were some time and budget constraints. Ideally i would have interviewed  a larger sample set of individuals experiencing feelings of stress and anxiety when it comes to self-development.

As the product was designed based on the assumption that I would have access to a sentiment analysis API for personalized insights taken from journal entries, in the future I would  work with a developer to understand the feasibility of the journal insight feature.

One of the key problems within this project was the wide range for features to consider, if I were to continue on developing product, i would prioritize the journal insights features and launch it as the MVP in the go-to-market strategy. A large amount of features to QA may lead to a reduction of the Quality post launch without the man power to support such large features to develop.

Exploring the current struggles in journaling and goal setting among adults.

To ground the concept in real user needs, I began by exploring the behavioral and mental constraints people face in achieving personal goals.

I conducted a 15-question survey using Qualtrics with 23 participants and interviewed 6 people for deeper insights into their experiences and challenges with goal setting, tracking, and journaling.

This research aimed to validate my assumptions on:

• The need for sources of accountability
• The significance of positive emotions in maintaining healthy daily practices like journaling, habit tracking, and goal tracking.
• The impact of feeling secure in oneself on goal achievement.
• The need for consistent mental well-being in the pursuit of one's goals.

I discovered a major issue: young adults face a lot of pressure from different parts of their lives, which makes it hard for them to keep growing personally.

Through an affinity diagramming exercise, I reviewed user data, organized, and summarized key points. I found that these pressures often interfere with their ability to focus on personal growth and maintain self-improvement practices. Those dealing with mental health challenges, in particular, struggle to stay motivated and consistent in their personal development efforts.

Key Insights:

Many are stress and overwhelm: According to participants, many feel overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed, which impacts their ability to focus on personal growth​​.

“ I don’t really set goals for myself and because of that I find myself sometimes lost in life and not know what to do next.“ - Interview participant 1

‍

People feel like they Lack of Clarity and Support of their dreams: Many individuals lack a clear system for tracking their goals and often feel lost without external support.

“I find it challenging to maintain consistency without external support or tracking methods.“ -  Interview participant 5

‍

Self-Criticism weighs heavy on people's minds: Negative self-talk and low mental health can hinder personal growth and reduce motivation.

“If I’m anxious and think I missed doing a habit. In my mind. I'm like, since I mess up, I dont need to achieve my goal” -  Interview participant 3

I explored ways to increase clarity for the 'lost' group through journal insights & Vision Boards.

I aimed to create a mobile app with a unique journaling approach and  innovating goal-setting practices to encourage user's journaling and goal tracking behaviors. To achieve this, I illustrated user flow diagrams depicting the user journey for creating an account, making a journal entry, and tracking goals through vision boards.

Initially, many features incorporated AI, but I decided to change this and focus on more technically feasible solutions for journaling and vision board creation.

So, I planned to make the process for creating a journal entry simple by utilizing personalized prompts. The goal was to provide a simple method for logging journal entries while gaining personalized insights. This approach aimed to offer users clarity about their inner world, potentially increasing motivation to pursue their goals.

One of the main design challenges of this project was influencing user behaviors effectively.

Feedback from my program facilitator highlighted that the onboarding process might be overwhelming due to the app’s multiple paths and numerous feature requirements-So the entire onboarding and new user experience needed to be revised

To address this, I came up with a strategy to gradually introduce the journal insight feature as users explore the app and log their emotions. By locking certain features for first-time users and only allowing them to access journal insights after the 7th day of logging their emotions, I aimed to encourage regular use and habit formation.

This approach was based on the assumption that incentivizing people to unlock a feature would improve user activation metrics, such as the frequency of emotion logging. This led to a more intentional design and a more simplified onboarding experience.

To ensure Ember consistently provided a nurturing and supportive experience, I refined the app's tone of voice and language across all user interactions.

Given Ember’s emphasis on mindfulness and personal growth, the content language needed to empower and uplift users, fostering a safe and welcoming environment. I found that missteps in tone could significantly impact user confidence when creating a software to influence a person's psychology.

Key Challenges:

• Onboarding Experience: Creating a warm and encouraging tone from the start was essential. The onboarding language needed to be welcoming, guiding users smoothly and setting a positive tone for their journey within Ember.
• Restricted Features: Communicating about restricted features without discouraging users was important. The goal was to maintain a supportive tone that motivated further exploration of the app.
• Journal User Journey: Providing clear descriptions of sentiment analysis journal insights was crucial. This transparency kept users informed about how their entries were analyzed, enhancing their connection and engagement with the app's features.

I prototype key interactions of a robust app that not only meets users where they are in their journey but also guides them towards personal growth.

These 6 prototyped workflows were critical for testing interactions and ensuring the processes, such as creating a journal entry, were intuitive and not overwhelming. Presenting these prototypes to my peers during class allowed me to gather immediate feedback. Ultimately, the prototypes helped establish key tasks to test the experience with users, guiding me toward a more user-friendly design.

User testing revealed that there is a desire for personalization.

Within the 20 insights that I found, users desired more personalized experiences within the app. In response, I enhanced the profile customization options to allow users to tailor their experience to hide and show their personal data and improved emotion tracking graph features by showing monthly and weekly data.

I would like more customization in my profile, Can I choose day by day analytics as well as month by month?

‍

All 6 participants felt that the restricted features for first-time users was de-motivating.

Too many restricted features during onboarding demotivated new users. I adjusted the access model to unlock more features initially, making the app more engaging for first-time users.

What can I do as a first time user? There is way too much locked features. This will not improve my motivation, this feels like a pay wall.

Participants noted the need for clearer instructions within accessing journal prompts.

Users needed clearer instructions about the journal prompts. Descriptions and guidance within the journal and insights pages. I improved the content within the journal prompts cards and added obvious visual cues to provide better navigation and understanding.

Are these prompts? These don't look like journal prompts.

‍

As this project was part of a Masters in Fine Arts graduate Capstone course, there were time and budget constraints.

Ideally, I would have interviewed a larger sample of individuals experiencing stress and anxiety related to self-development. Also, one of the main challenges was streamlining the product's numerous features. If I were to continue developing this product, I would prioritize the journal insights feature and launch it as the MVP in the go-to-market strategy.

Metrics and User Engagement:

For a market launch, I would focus on retention rates and track Genuine Active Users (GAUs) to measure engagement. Additionally, monitoring the total number of journal entries per user would help assess the effectiveness of the solution.

Future Development and Feasibility:

The product was designed with the assumption of using a sentiment analysis API for personalized insights. In the future, I would collaborate with a developer to evaluate the feasibility of the journal insights feature, ensuring it can be built successfully.

How might we help people achieve their goals while incorporating mindfulness practices to reduce mental stress and empower users on their path to personal growth?

Most often people who find themselves struggling with their mental health find it challenging to stay motivated and focused to achieve their goals or create better self-improvement  practices due to the worries and pressure of  their everyday life.

Often many make a plan to create habits or goals but often abandon them due to a lack of clarity they have in themselves or lacking a system for accountability. I wanted to explore ways to influence adults to develop healthier self-development habits.

In the end, I optimize the in app experience through 2 rounds of iteration of the tested designs. This resulted in a robust app that not only meets users where they are but also guides them towards their personal growth goals. The integration of thoughtful design elements ensures that users feel motivated and supported, transforming their journey of personal growth from a challenge into a path of inspiration and achievement.

By testing 6 features within the MVP, feedback revealed that all 6 participants found that the app's design could make the processes of journaling and goal achievement  both engaging and easily accessible

As this project was part of a Graduate Capstone course there were some time and budget constraints. Ideally i would have interviewed  a larger sample set of individuals experiencing feelings of stress and anxiety when it comes to self-development.

As the product was designed based on the assumption that I would have access to a sentiment analysis API for personalized insights taken from journal entries, in the future I would  work with a developer to understand the feasibility of the journal insight feature.

One of the key problems within this project was the wide range for features to consider, if I were to continue on developing product, i would prioritize the journal insights features and launch it as the MVP in the go-to-market strategy. A large amount of features to QA may lead to a reduction of the Quality post launch without the man power to support such large features to develop.

Exploring the current struggles in journaling and goal setting among adults.

To ground the concept in real user needs, I began by exploring the behavioral and mental constraints people face in achieving personal goals.

I conducted a 15-question survey using Qualtrics with 23 participants and interviewed 6 people for deeper insights into their experiences and challenges with goal setting, tracking, and journaling.

This research aimed to validate my assumptions on:

• The need for sources of accountability
• The significance of positive emotions in maintaining healthy daily practices like journaling, habit tracking, and goal tracking.
• The impact of feeling secure in oneself on goal achievement.
• The need for consistent mental well-being in the pursuit of one's goals.

All 6 participants felt that the restricted features for first-time users was de-motivating.

Too many restricted features during onboarding demotivated new users. I adjusted the access model to unlock more features initially, making the app more engaging for first-time users.

What can I do as a first time user? There is way too much locked features. This will not improve my motivation, this feels like a pay wall.

Participants noted the need for clearer instructions within accessing journal prompts.

Users needed clearer instructions about the journal prompts. Descriptions and guidance within the journal and insights pages. I improved the content within the journal prompts cards and added obvious visual cues to provide better navigation and understanding.

Are these prompts? These don't look like journal prompts.

‍

I discovered a major issue: young adults face a lot of pressure from different parts of their lives, which makes it hard for them to keep growing personally.

Through an affinity diagramming exercise, I reviewed user data, organized, and summarized key points. I found that these pressures often interfere with their ability to focus on personal growth and maintain self-improvement practices. Those dealing with mental health challenges, in particular, struggle to stay motivated and consistent in their personal development efforts.

Key Insights:

Many are stress and overwhelm: According to participants, many feel overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed, which impacts their ability to focus on personal growth​​.

“ I don’t really set goals for myself and because of that I find myself sometimes lost in life and not know what to do next.“ - Interview participant 1

‍

People feel like they Lack of Clarity and Support of their dreams: Many individuals lack a clear system for tracking their goals and often feel lost without external support.

“I find it challenging to maintain consistency without external support or tracking methods.“ -  Interview participant 5

‍

Self-Criticism weighs heavy on people's minds: Negative self-talk and low mental health can hinder personal growth and reduce motivation.

“If I’m anxious and think I missed doing a habit. In my mind. I'm like, since I mess up, I dont need to achieve my goal” -  Interview participant 3

I explored ways to increase clarity for the 'lost' group through journal insights & Vision Boards.

I aimed to create a mobile app with a unique journaling approach and  innovating goal-setting practices to encourage user's journaling and goal tracking behaviors. To achieve this, I illustrated user flow diagrams depicting the user journey for creating an account, making a journal entry, and tracking goals through vision boards.

Initially, many features incorporated AI, but I decided to change this and focus on more technically feasible solutions for journaling and vision board creation.

So, I planned to make the process for creating a journal entry simple by utilizing personalized prompts. The goal was to provide a simple method for logging journal entries while gaining personalized insights. This approach aimed to offer users clarity about their inner world, potentially increasing motivation to pursue their goals.

One of the main design challenges of this project was influencing user behaviors effectively.

Feedback from my program facilitator highlighted that the onboarding process might be overwhelming due to the app’s multiple paths and numerous feature requirements-So the entire onboarding and new user experience needed to be revised

To address this, I came up with a strategy to gradually introduce the journal insight feature as users explore the app and log their emotions. By locking certain features for first-time users and only allowing them to access journal insights after the 7th day of logging their emotions, I aimed to encourage regular use and habit formation.

This approach was based on the assumption that incentivizing people to unlock a feature would improve user activation metrics, such as the frequency of emotion logging. This led to a more intentional design and a more simplified onboarding experience.

From the research insights, I identified three user archetypes in personal development: aspiring novices, struggling beginners, and ambitious experts.

These archetypes share a strong desire to take control of their lives and grow. However, I focused the MVP on the "lost" users—young adults feeling stuck due to mental barriers—because there was more market opportunity to help this group.

One key design challenge was to educate these struggling adults on better self-development practices like journaling, goal tracking, and emotion reflection, ensuring consistent behavior in these practices.

To ensure Ember consistently provided a nurturing and supportive experience, I refined the app's tone of voice and language across all user interactions.

Given Ember’s emphasis on mindfulness and personal growth, the content language needed to empower and uplift users, fostering a safe and welcoming environment. I found that missteps in tone could significantly impact user confidence when creating a software to influence a person's psychology.

Key Challenges:

• Onboarding Experience: Creating a warm and encouraging tone from the start was essential. The onboarding language needed to be welcoming, guiding users smoothly and setting a positive tone for their journey within Ember.
• Restricted Features: Communicating about restricted features without discouraging users was important. The goal was to maintain a supportive tone that motivated further exploration of the app.
• Journal User Journey: Providing clear descriptions of sentiment analysis journal insights was crucial. This transparency kept users informed about how their entries were analyzed, enhancing their connection and engagement with the app's features.

I prototype key interactions of a robust app that not only meets users where they are in their journey but also guides them towards personal growth.

These 6 prototyped workflows were critical for testing interactions and ensuring the processes, such as creating a journal entry, were intuitive and not overwhelming. Presenting these prototypes to my peers during class allowed me to gather immediate feedback. Ultimately, the prototypes helped establish key tasks to test the experience with users, guiding me toward a more user-friendly design.

I led 6 virtual user testing sessions to validate the core features and gather insights into the app’s usability to then inform the iteration process.

I user tested the high-fidelity prototypes on Figma, showcasing Ember’s major functionalities and user workflows to participants that fit the 'lost' user archetype.

The prototypes that were tested included detailed interactions for key features such as the onboarding process, journaling and routine building and logging. Participants navigated through the app’s main functionalities and provided feedback on the interface, design clarity, and feature relevance.

How might we help people achieve their goals while incorporating mindfulness practices to reduce mental stress and empower users on their path to personal growth?

Most often people who find themselves struggling with their mental health find it challenging to stay motivated and focused to achieve their goals or create better self-improvement  practices due to the worries and pressure of  their everyday life.

Often many make a plan to create habits or goals but often abandon them due to a lack of clarity they have in themselves or lacking a system for accountability. I wanted to explore ways to influence adults to develop healthier self-development habits.

In the end, I optimize the in app experience through 2 rounds of iteration of the tested designs. This resulted in a robust app that not only meets users where they are but also guides them towards their personal growth goals. The integration of thoughtful design elements ensures that users feel motivated and supported, transforming their journey of personal growth from a challenge into a path of inspiration and achievement.

By testing 6 features within the MVP, feedback revealed that all 6 participants found that the app's design could make the processes of journaling and goal achievement  both engaging and easily accessible

As this project was part of a Graduate Capstone course there were some time and budget constraints. Ideally i would have interviewed  a larger sample set of individuals experiencing feelings of stress and anxiety when it comes to self-development.

As the product was designed based on the assumption that I would have access to a sentiment analysis API for personalized insights taken from journal entries, in the future I would  work with a developer to understand the feasibility of the journal insight feature.

One of the key problems within this project was the wide range for features to consider, if I were to continue on developing product, i would prioritize the journal insights features and launch it as the MVP in the go-to-market strategy. A large amount of features to QA may lead to a reduction of the Quality post launch without the man power to support such large features to develop.

Over 14 weeks, I led the end-to-end human-centered design process for a mobile app aimed at increasing consistency in self-development practices for adults feeling lost.

My process focused on the new user onboarding journey and key tasks for experienced users, including home, profile, journal entries, insights, vision boards, and habits pages. This approach ensured a curated path to healthier habits and consistent self-development practices.

The project timeline included:

• 2 Weeks: User research, problem redefinition through affinity mapping, and strategizing solutions and key features.
• 2 Week: Mapping the user journey for new users and developing the app's information architecture.
• 5 Weeks: Delivering low and high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
• 2 Weeks: User testing the prototype ‍
• 3 Weeks: iterating on the six main pages and five task flows for the final deliverable

As this project was part of a Masters in Fine Arts graduate Capstone course, there were time and budget constraints.

Ideally, I would have interviewed a larger sample of individuals experiencing stress and anxiety related to self-development. Also, one of the main challenges was streamlining the product's numerous features. If I were to continue developing this product, I would prioritize the journal insights feature and launch it as the MVP in the go-to-market strategy.

Metrics and User Engagement:

For a market launch, I would focus on retention rates and track Genuine Active Users (GAUs) to measure engagement. Additionally, monitoring the total number of journal entries per user would help assess the effectiveness of the solution.

Future Development and Feasibility:

The product was designed with the assumption of using a sentiment analysis API for personalized insights. In the future, I would collaborate with a developer to evaluate the feasibility of the journal insights feature, ensuring it can be built successfully.

Over 14 weeks, I led the end-to-end human-centered design process for a mobile app aimed at increasing consistency in self-development practices for adults feeling lost.

My process focused on the new user onboarding journey and key tasks for experienced users, including home, profile, journal entries, insights, vision boards, and habits pages. This approach ensured a curated path to healthier habits and consistent self-development practices.

The project timeline included:

• 2 Weeks: User research, problem redefinition through affinity mapping, and strategizing solutions and key features.
• 2 Week: Mapping the user journey for new users and developing the app's information architecture.
• 5 Weeks: Delivering low and high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
• 2 Weeks: User testing the prototype ‍
• 3 Weeks: iterating on the six main pages and five task flows for the final deliverable