Capturing Thoughts in Seconds: A Journaling App for Busy Minds
How we created a concept that makes building a journaling routine easy.
Role:
UX/UI Design
Field:
Mental Health
Duration:
2 weeks
Challenges
During research phase, we identified the following challenges:
There is a discrepancy between what people want and what they do when it comes to writing down their thoughts. In our survey with 30 participants, we found out that 70% would like to journal more often than they do it.
The top two reasons for that are that people have no time to journal in their busy day to day life or simply forget it.
Looking at competitors at the market, there are a lot of apps with seemingly endless features. We needed to find out how to not overwhelm our target group with features, therefore be very mindful in the feature prioritization phase.
Approach
Discovery
Secondary Research: It is widely known that journaling is a tool to calm the mind and comes with many health benefits, such as: practicing gratitude, reducing stress and getting to know yourself and your habits on a deeper level.
User Research: Conducting information about users (one survey with 30 participants and three detailed interviews with people who are into journaling and one person that works in the mental health industry) has revealed to us journaling habits and pain points. A lot of people get frustrated when they break their routine. Doing it regularly ensures to deal with problems calmer and more mindful. We also found out, that there are people who want to save their thoughts on the go and appreciate to have an organized information structure, so they can check their notes after a while to analyze behavioral patterns.
Definition
Focusing on getting to know the user’s needs, we created a detailed user persona, that struggles to find a journaling routine but really wants to include it in their daily life for a better mental health.
By sketching out a typical day in Maya’s life we identified ambitious characteristics in various areas of life, one of them also being a good mental health.
So our leading question was: How Might We create a journaling app that aligns with Maya’s daily schedule?
Ideation
After ideating on possible features, we needed to prioritize which ones were the most important to avoid overwhelming the user with options. We decided to agree on four crucial features, ensuring a quicker user flow than most of the competitors have: voice memos, writing option, photo upload and mood tracker.
Design
To create a calm and inviting space, we used a muted pastel color scheme and the simple font DM Sans, that makes reading as easy as possible. We wanted to minimize the time and effort a user must take to journal in order to be able to implement routines into daily life.
Testing
After testing our mid-fi prototype, we crafted the high-fi prototype taking the user feedback into consideration. The next step will be to test the high-fi and to iterate the design process depending on the feedback.
Conclusion
The app memo reimagines journaling by embracing the power of voice memos, making reflection effortless and immediate. With a commitment to simplicity it welcomes its users into a calming atmosphere when entering the interface.
