Through my competitor analysis and analogous research, I found that many paid mental health and meditation apps offer their services at around $40-90/year, with most meditation apps being $70-90/year at regular pricing. Some meditation apps also typically feature various accessibility options, such as Closed Captioning, playback speed, audio skip, and video toggle.

As for the secondary research, a brief literature review was carried out using sections from two different books (Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction published by Springer Nature Switzerland, and Informatics and Technology in Clinical Care and Public Health, 1st edition, edited by John Mantas and more), each discussing human-computer interaction and how individuality (such as personal preferences or physical limitations) can affect those experiences.

03 - ANALYZE

Compiling & triangulating the findings

Insight #1: Visuals & functionalities

Through the user research and literature reviews, I found that people are more likely to deem a meditation app effective, accessible and enjoyable if it includes timers, tracking facilities, reminders and connection to a community. Additionally, making an app aesthetically pleasing, interactive, and high-quality in terms of its content also contributes greatly to the overall effectiveness of the app.

Insight #2: Options to improve

Some alternative, more accessible options that could be incorporated in the final design include details of the meditation, transcripts, videos, or unique visual designs that enhance the experience of the meditations.

Visualizing the users & their experience

I created a constraints map, which helped me process and consider a wider range of realistic limitations users may face while participating in a meditation session using the app.

I used this constraints map to create three personas, each with different constraints as well as strong goals and motives that reflect the findings from the triangulated research.

The goals, motives and constraints in these personas emphasize the importance of three characteristics in a meditation app: effectiveness, accessibility and enjoyability.

These empathy maps acted as a general outline for the context scenarios that were eventually created for each persona.

Defining the key functionalities

Here, I decided that I would add three new features to the app’s meditation sessions which would improve its accessibility to hearing impaired users, as well as improve the enjoyability of the app overall.

• Closed Captioning: Allow users to participate in a meditation visually without sound, greatly benefiting those who have hearing limitations or impairments. It could also help increase focus, which would allow users to understand and comprehend the content easier.
• Video: Meditation-related visuals that enhance the meditation experience, improving the overall interactivity and quality of the app’s content.
• Playback speed: Improve the user’s focus and attention. This feature also improves the accessibility of the app to those with difficulties processing information, allowing users to customize their listening experience by changing the rate at which information is displayed.

To formally describe the ‘whats’ that this redesign of the app would feature, a design requirements chart was filled out from the perspective of these three personas. Creating design requirements further defined the issues that would be solved through these new features, and helped solidify the functionalities that the app would need to satisfy the users’ needs.

However, it is still crucially important to recognize the pain points these personas may face while using the app, even with these new features in mind. After reflecting on the key features that I had outlined in my design requirements chart and the narratives I had built through the context scenarios, I created three user journey maps. It was easier to finally understand the perspective of the users from all angles, and the pain points they face in their user experience.

04 - PROTOTYPE, TEST & ITERATE

Creating the prototype

I created low-fidelity wireframes of the app’s new interface using the current app’s design as a reference point. Most screens stayed the same, with the exception of the meditation session page, where I added three icons for the three new features.

After that, I conducted multiple user tests on the low-fidelity wireframes using three task scenarios that incorporate the usage of these new features as part of their user journey. I learned that while users initially found the app’s naming conventions confusing and unclear, they eventually found it easier to use the app once they had experience with the product. Through pre-test and post-test questionnaires, I learned that users also felt that using the meditation session’s new features were relatively easy and straightforward.

05 - SOLUTION

Style guide and final prototype

Following the user tests and before developing a high-fidelity prototype, I created a UI style guide of the brand’s existing visual design. This helped visually organize the app’s brand design, and create icons that were visually consistent with the app’s existing look.

The eye icon (for video), CC icon (for closed captioning) and 1x text (for playback speed) were finalized and chosen to represent the new features, and high-fidelity wireframes were created.

06 - NEXT STEPS

Closing reflection

This inclusive design project taught me an important lesson regarding the ethics of design: that is the responsibility I have as a designer to create products that are not only visually appealing and usable for the main demographic, but also accessible and inclusive of everyone.

I also think it’s important to not overlook the empathize and understand phase of any design project, as it is crucial to have a deeper understanding of the range of users I am solving for, in order to feel confident moving forward into the following stages of the project, and to create a design that truly addresses and solves the issue at hand.