OurHerd
Duration: 2 Weeks
Client: Batyr
Project Overview
About OurHerd:
OurHerd is a storytelling mobile app created by Batyr and it gives young people across Australia a chance to have their voices heard, a place where they can safely share life experiences and talk about how they have overcome tough times.
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The brief:
Batyr is looking to enhance the experience of the OurHerd app through two key areas:
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Create a seamless and exciting story creation flow
Design features to improve a young person's holistic wellbeing, with focus on exercise, sleep and nutrition
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As we had a large team, I worked with the story creation group, while the other half of the team tackled the holistic wellbeing brief.
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My role:
Research, personas, customer journey maps, sketches, wireframes, design iterations and the final hi-fidelity prototype.
Problem Statement
Young Australians with mental health concerns feel apprehensive about sharing their story with others and need to feel confident and supported but are worried about stigma and judgement.
Research Approach
Competitor Analysis was conducted on popular social media platforms, health & productivity apps and other wellbeing services in Australia. The Rose, Bud and Thorn method was used to find where each platform excelled and the opportunities we could learn from.
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Desktop Research allowed the team and I to learn more about the mental health space, as it wasn't a topic we were familar with. Past research papers provided a better understanding of the current climate, especially with the affects of COVID on mental health.
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Surveys & Interviews helped us find the quantitative and qualitative data needed and after synthesis, was then used as the foundation of our persona and journey map.
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During this phase of the UX process, creating interview questions about mental health was quite challenging as I wasn't experienced with this topic. However with this said, the team and I were able to develop safe questions to ask that allowed us to gather the data we needed.
Persona & Customer Journey Map
With the research data collected and synthesized, I helped create a persona and customer journey map to visualise the users we were designing for.
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To embody our research, please meet Nina!
How Might We
In Nina's journey map, I was able to identify her pain points and when they occurred in her journey.
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These pain points were used as opportunities and helped develop the following How Might We questions.
Design Workshop
Another member of my team fascilitated the workshop with the client and we went through the How Might We statements, Group Acitvities, Crazy 8's and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) exercises to help lay the foundations for the design.
Development, Usability Tests & Iteration
With all the ideas now generated from the workshop, a user flow was established to see how many screens needed designing. Then, I started sketching concepts to help visualise how each solution could work and intereact with each other. These sketches then turned into digital wireframes, with the purpose of gaining early feedback from usability testing.
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Usability Testing Approach:
My team members conducted the usability tests and I synthesized the feedback and iterated the UI solution further.
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The team conducted 3 rounds of testing (lo-fidelity, mid-fidelity & high-fidelity) with a 5 different users at each round.
Maze was also used to develop heatmaps. This allowed me to see where users were tapping on the screen and it helped validate what was working well and what needed more attention.
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Usability Testing Insights:
I learnt that wording needed careful selection as some users found them triggering or confusing
I learnt that users wanted to be guided through the entire story creation flow
I needed to simplify the story creation process further
Imagery has great impact in setting the mood
Animations & micro interactions when used correctly, can greatly affect the user positively
(Click image below to expand)
Prototype
Below, you'll find a handful of features designed for the OurHerd app to help create an exciting and seamless story creation flow.
Story Card Building
Originally, the OurHerd app captured your story through a simple form. I've designed the new story creation flow in card format, as this helps to breakdown the form and helps Nina focus on one story prompt at a time.
Add/Remove Story Cards
I designed the new story creation flow with an emphasis on flexibility. This allows Nina to tell her story in the way the works best for her and allows her change her mind if she wanted to add images, videos and other supporting media.
Rearrange Story Cards
Writting a story can be difficult, especially when you may have several ideas coming to you all at once. With ease flexibility being the focus, Nina can quickly jot down ideas for her story and re-arrange them in any way she wants to.
Choosing When To Share Your Story
From our research, we found that Nina is quite worried about how her story would be percieved by the public and often this becomes the biggest roadblock to sharing. The team and I devised of a 'private' to 'visible' toggle feature, to give Nina control and a sense of comfort to sharing her life experiences.
Showing Support
Here, we've chosen to give Nina a selection of supportive reactions to help support the another author in their journey. The main idea is for the author to feel postively supported from the audience.
