HEADSPACE FEELINGS
CONTEXT -
Headspace is an app that makes mindfulness, meditation, and mental wellness tools approachable.
I designed a feature called ‘Headspace Feelings’ which is a mood tracker and journaling tool. This feature analyzes patterns based on how you’re feeling, where you’ve been feeling your best and worst, and gives you recommendations from the Headspace library.
GOAL - Finding common pain points among Headspace users and proposing a feature that seamlessly fits into the current app infrastructure.
SCOPE - User Interviews, Wire-framing & Prototyping, UX Research, UI Design
TIMELINE - 1 month (Nov - Dec 2023)
PROTOTYPE - Click Here︎︎︎
I designed a feature called ‘Headspace Feelings’ which is a mood tracker and journaling tool. This feature analyzes patterns based on how you’re feeling, where you’ve been feeling your best and worst, and gives you recommendations from the Headspace library.
GOAL - Finding common pain points among Headspace users and proposing a feature that seamlessly fits into the current app infrastructure.
SCOPE - User Interviews, Wire-framing & Prototyping, UX Research, UI Design
TIMELINE - 1 month (Nov - Dec 2023)
PROTOTYPE - Click Here︎︎︎
PROBLEM DISCOVERY
Constant stress, disturbed sleep and unregulated emotions have started to take a toll on our collective health more than ever before. Some people turn to therapy and others turn to apps to meet the same need. I spoke to 40 users on how they dealt with stress, anxiety and sleep issues both digitally and outside apps to understand what they did to cope. I identified the users who use mindfulness apps and Headspace in particular to understand what they needed.
WHAT USERS WANTED
Through user interviews, I discovered that Headspace users wanted to record progress, set goals, personalize their feeds, connect socially, and customize their mental health journey. These needs took form in the following features - note taking, progress tracking, goal setting, personalization, and social interaction. I conducted a round of interviews on sketches on each idea and feedback leaned heavily towards tracking and goal setting. All users were interested in personalization in some form. They felt strongly against social features because they didn’t feel like sharing details of their mental health in a social space.
MID FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
I explored meeting the needs of Headspace users through prototypes of the mood tracking and goal setting features.
CHOSEN DIRECTION
I conducted a round of interviews on mid fidelity mid resolution prototypes. 3 of 5 users leaned towards the mood tracker and 2 of 5 leaned on the goal setting feature. All users wanted to see more usage of Headspace’s friendly visual language. 4 of 5 users wanted to know how the data from both features would be visualized.
MID FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
This set of prototypes go deeper into tracking moods, what environmental factors cause that mood, taking notes, visualizing that data and taking notes through text, audio or images.
USER FEEDBACK
- Users felt that this feature would be most valuable if the analytics page gave them a summary of the analyzed data and a clear step forward. This could be in the form of weekly or monthly recommendations based on their feelings in that period.
- Users also wanted to hide data such as who you’re spending time with to avoid feeling shame or guilt.
- 50% of users wanted to see more of the ‘Headspace emojis’.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Users want data to be summarized and given to them in a way that’s clear and actionable
PROPOSED SOLUTION
1. For the user -
Users get to record their feelings in as much detail as they want. They can track their progress and also see what in their environment is making them thrive. They get to enable and hide information according to what is relevant to them. In addition to this, they are given recommendations of content that would suit them the most, saving them the time of having to find the right meditation or course.
2. For Headspace -
The check in flow and analytics page provide personalized recommendations to users. It helps them to better use the large amount of content in the Headspace library. They get to track progress and find content specific to them. This will increase the impact of the time users spend on Headspace.
REFLECTIONS AND NEXT STEPS
It was rewarding working within the existing visual language of an app like Headspace. I had to be mindful to design a feature that would fit in seamlessly within Headspace and not stand out.
This project taught me the vast differences in how people take care of themselves. Every interview gave me a new insight of how people practice mindfulness and how they use the app. I tried to incorporate as many small thoughtful gestures as I could to ensure that Headspace’s gentle approach stayed constant.
The next steps would be to find a way to export this data to share with therapists. Some users I interviewed used Headspace along with traditional therapy and wanted a way to share these records with their therapists.