Yaas!
A motivation buddy to help you achieve your goals faster
How it started?
Often, when talking to friends about achieving goals, the conversation goes like..
Hey how's your Spanish class going?
Didn't attend last two sessions! Got bored to do it alone! :( May be I will start from next Monday again! :P
These frequent conversations got me thinking how can I help people stay motivated to achieve their goals?
OVERVIEW
What is Yaas?
Yaas app motivate individuals
at every small step of the goal
completion process, by giving them
tips, showcasing progress, and
boosting their energy.
Solo Project
A solo project at
UC Berkeley,
fall 2019
Timeline
4 weeks
My Role
- UX Research
- UX Design
- Visual Design
Tools Used
Figma
PROBLEM
People like to set goals to learn new things, but they often remain unsuccessful to achieve them till the end.
GOAL
Motivate people to do more
of what they love efficiently and
finish their goals faster
NOW LET'S SEE BEHIND THE SCENES!
Empathize
Conducted interviews to understand user needs and pain points
Define
Defined problem statement based on
the research
Ideate
Brainstormed different ideas to solve
the problem
Prototype
Designed low-fi & mid-fi prototypes to quickly
try out ideas
Test
Conducted user testing
to get feedback and iterate
-TIME TO DIVE DEEP INTO THE PROBLEM-
USER RESEARCH
User Research
Online user survey with 25 participants - As a first step, I decided to do quantitative analysis by conducting a user survey to validate how many people are facing the challenge of not being able to finish their goals and what are the reasons?
User survey key findings
In-person user interviews with 5 participants - I, then conducted 5 in-person interviews to understand "why" behind a user feedback from the survey and to get a deeper understanding of their current process of achieving goals, what are their motivations, needs and pain points
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping helped me analyze all the findings from interviews and find patterns by organizing them into categories of goals, behaviors, motivations and pain points
Key insights from the interviews
User pain points-
1
Users find it hard to finish
pending tasks
Procrastinating due to lack
of motivation
3
2
It gets difficult for the users
to finish projects alone
4
They often feel overwhelmed by their own expectations
User motivations-
1
Their progress & achievements
motivate them to finish tasks faster
2
Having like-minded people around helps them to achieve goals
ARE YOU WONDERING WHAT I AM WONDERING ABOUT?
"WHY PEOPLE NEED ANOTHER PRODUCTIVITY APP?"
Competitive Analysis
To find an answer to this question I conducted a competitive analysis to understand what features current apps are providing and what is lacking. This helped me to find opportunities for my app and fill the gap to meet user needs.
Opportunities
Archetype
Insights from user research and affinity mapping helped me define the users of this app, their frustrations and goals
Individuals who are curious, passionate, and excited to learn new things but often do not finish the projects they have started.
Age Group
18-40
Their Frustrations
- Getting overwhelmed by the amount of projects to be worked on
​
- Feeling less motivated when working on something alone
​
- Not finding enough time to work on
side projects
Their Goals
- Work on skills and hobbies of their interest
​
- Find someone with similar interests to work on it as a team
​
- Get better at planning projects
"If someone can give me a little motivational push, I will move mountains!"
- Riya
USER JOURNEY
Based on the user research insights I made a user journey map, which helped me understand in which phase users are facing the most challenges to further identify opportunities for brainstorming solution ideas.
HOW MIGHT WE
Based on user research and customer journey, I defined 'how might we' question to decide further direction for brainstorming ideas.
How might we keep motivating users as sports coach motivate their team players?
BRAINSTORMING IDEAS
FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
From all the feature ideas, I prioritized and chose the ones which were meeting user's primary goals and needs, which had maximum user reach and value outcome.
1. Create personal and shared projects
3. Get tips on the
progress, to do better in next projects
5. Suggest free slots in calendar to finish pending tasks
Assumption: Users might not give access to the personal or work calendar
2. A project buddy to motivate users at every step
4. Share achievements
on the feed
6. Push notifications and reminders on digital wrist watch
Not majority of the users
own digital wrist watch
Features to incorporate later
USER FLOWS
After prioritizing features, I worked on the key user flows to decide how users
would navigate to perform key tasks on the app
Create a project and add a collaborator
View progress and use tips to improve
INITIAL SKETCHES
Then, I did rapid paper sketches which helped me quickly explore different ideas for
key screens
USABILITY TESTING
Low-fi rapid prototype user testing
After exploring different ideas, I conducted a low-fidelity prototype testing with 5 users to understand how they are reacting to the prototype and the idea and identify usability issues in the early stage.
Insights from low-fi prototype testing
Conducting low-fi prototype testing helped me get user feedback to iterate on key user flows
What feedback users gave?
How did I iterate?
OLD
NEW
1. Lengthy Process
4/5 Users found project creating process too long.
Users had to go through 3 screens to create a new project
I combined all the steps on one screen to make the process quick and remove predictability
2. Poor information
chunking
3/5 Users got confused about
how to use tips suggested on
the progress screen
Poor chunking of related information caused a confusion
I showcased tips right below the
respective progress information to provide context to let user take the action further
3. Discoverability
4/5 Users couldn't find add new task easily. They asked if they can add notes to the
task individually
Users took time to find Add new task CTA. And they were wondering how to add notes to the tasks individually.
I moved Add new task CTA next to tasks title to make it easily findable and gave an ability to add notes individually
WIREFRAME EXPLORATIONS AND USABILITY TESTING FEEDBACK
Taking all the feedback ahead from low-fi usability testing, I explored different approaches for key screens and added 2 new flows.
A/B testing to evaluate home page approach
​
I conducted A/B testing with 5 users to test home page approach to evaluate which helps them get the most important information about their tasks and decide next actions.
Tasks first approach
Project first approach
User Quote - " Sometimes we create a group on a texting app to help each other with our projects and motivate each other"
- Michelle
THE AHA MOMENT!
This got me thinking-
How can I motivate users when they are stuck or overwhelmed?
How can I enable users to help each other with their projects?
​
Let's see what solutions I designed for these use cases-
Solution 1 - Mood Identifier
​
From the task completion statistics of the project if the app observes that user has lot of overdue tasks then it can ask users how is it going and offer helpful tips based on their response to motivate them to overcome the obstacles
Solution 2 - Share task status with friends to get appreciation, help
and motivation
​
Along with sharing proud moments with friends after completing the task, users can also share feelings when they are stuck or demotivated to get help to finish tasks
DESIGN STYLE GUIDE
Before designing high-fidelity mockups, I designed style guide to design app logo, define color palette, typography and illustrations
HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUPS
Onboarding
A quick walkthrough of key features for the first time users before they sign up
Sign up
First time users can fill the sign up form and choose their project buddy who will motivate them at the every step of their goal achievement process
Create a project
Users can add a project title, add a collaborator, decide due date and add tasks to create a project
Edit and manage project tasks, add a friend to finish projects together
Users can easily edit existing tasks and add new tasks. They can add friends to the project to create shared tasks
View progress and use tips to finish tasks faster
Users can view weekly progress and get tips on how to improve planning tasks better. They can also view weekly achievements and skills learnt in a month. Calendar gives users an overview
of tasks in the pipeline to plan better or move around schedule
Share task status with friends to give and receive appreciation, motivation and help
Along with sharing proud moments with friends after completing the task, users can also share feelings when they are stuck or demotivated to get help to finish tasks
MEASURING SUCCESS
User Feedback and iterations
I conducted a usability testing with 5 users to evaluate the final high-fidelity designs to measure success, understand what users like, what they don't like, which tasks they are able to perform easily and where are they getting confused to further iterate the interactions.
Share task screen
Home screen
KEY LEARNINGS
1 Defining features for better user engagement
After couple of rounds of user testings, I realized that users are expecting something more than just a tool to plan their projects. Then I reworked on some of the features, like a mood slider to ask them how they are doing, providing tips on their progress to motivate them to do better next time, which enabled conversations with the user at every step of their journey for better interactions and engagement.
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2 Designing call to actions for bigger screens
After conducting usability tests on big screen size phones, I observed that users are struggling to tap on certain call to actions which are placed at the very top of the screen while using phone by one hand. I iterated UI design and repeated key CTA buttons on top and bottom of the screen for easy access.
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THANK YOU :)