Role:
UX Researcher, Designer
Duration:
24 hours
Tools:
Figma, Miro, Excel
Team Members:
Michelle Nguyen, Angela Nguyen, Katherine Kotsos, Ibraheem Siddiqui
Project Overview:
TILE Designathon: Our team, Seed Life, decided to create an application dedicated to promoting mental health in a positive manner that maintains a happy, healthy lifestyle.
Sapling assists people by encouraging them to improve their mental health!
This happens by providing daily tasks designed to improve a persons mental wellness, users can grow a virtual garden and have a visual representation of their progress.
SECOND PLACE WINNERS!
My Role:
Conducted a design sprint, creating a working prototype within a short time-frame. In this project, I designed vectored components and presented our findings to judges in a recorded video.
Problem Statement
How might we motivate people to take an active part in improving their own mental health?
+ Growing a garden gives a sense of progression
+ Users will want to come back to grow it
+ Other apps don’t have the same feeling of progression
User Research
WHO NEEDS THIS APP?
MARKET VIABILITY
+ Wellness apps have been growing for years
+ Mental health gets worse in pandemic for most
+ Definite growing market for Sapling
COMPETITION
+ Other apps don’t have the same visual sense of progression
+ Offers a unique way of tracking wellness
TARGET
+ Young adults who have a busy life
+ Adults who need to set time to relax
MONETIZATION
+ App could earn money by selling cosmetic upgrades to garden
+ Pay-to-win features like the ability to purchase various plants, pots, winter theme, beach theme, etc.
Design Process
WIREFRAMING
+ Developed a set of wireframes to loosely design the core appearance of our application
+ A simplistic, yet ideal base to prevent any future issues surrounding layout
+ Tested the navigation flow to see any potential issues to be fixed for the finalized version
BRANDING GUIDE
+ Created a branding guide to create a cohesive design while ensuring all members are using specific colours and fonts depending on the content (primary, secondary, or accents)
+ Utilized colours proven to boost mood (yellows and greens). A generally bright colour-scheme
Prototype
Outcome
Our team successfully developed Sapling, an innovative prototype promoting mental well-being.
Inspired by personal experiences with declining mental health during the pandemic, Sapling is an application that encourages users to adopt healthy habits and rewards them with tangible growth in the form of a virtual garden. Our involvement in the designathon not only allowed us to refine our UX/UI skills but also expanded our knowledge, contributing to the creation of a meaningful and impactful project. We had the opportunity to implement lean methodology to efficiently utilize the design process to quickly design an application that can be iterated upon submission. Sapling represents our dedication to addressing mental health challenges through creative and user-friendly solutions.