Emotional Houseplant

UX Design, Project Management

Project Overview

This was a solo design project that I completed between December 2021 and April 2022 for the CareerFoundry UX Design Immersion course.

The task was to create a health and wellness app that met certain parameters.

Class project for CareerFoundry
Completed part time between December 2021 and April 2022
User Research, User Journeys, User Flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Visual Design, Accessibility Auditing, Design Presentation

My Contributions

Sole UX Designer and Project Manager

Tools Used

Figma
Whimsical
Google Slides
Google Forms
Zoom

App name

I know what you’re really wondering. “What does ‘Emotional Houseplant’ mean?” Well, it’s a reference to a Tumblr post about self-care, reminding people to drink enough water and get outside to enjoy the sunshine.

This post says that we are all just houseplants with complicated emotions. I really like the reminder that as humans and organic beings we all have basic needs for survival beyond the cerebral, and I hoped that the name of the app would help remind users to care for the houseplant that is their own self.

For this project, I used the double diamond process including the following stages:
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Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver

The Process

Discover

While I had basic requirements laid out for me, I needed to understand the space that I’d be working in and the people who would be at the center of my design efforts.

The first step that I took to get a picture of the task ahead of me was to complete a competitive analysis complete with a SWOT Profile and UX analysis of two popular health related apps: MyFitnessPal and the Kaiser Permanente mobile app.

Additionally, I created a survey to assess how different people interact with and store their health information, to see if there was a space for an app like this on the market.

Define

With my research complete, it was time to create my problem statement. I also created user personas and user flows. I tried to think through what my experience would be like using the app if I was one of my personas.

Problem Statement

Users of Emotional Houseplant need a way to track all of their health and wellness information in one place because this information easily gets scattered and hard to access when needed.

Ideate

Now that I knew the route that my users would be taking to accomplish their in-app goals, it was time to create a sitemap that would reflect this route.

On the advice of my fearless mentor, I gave Whimsical a try for creating this sitemap, and I fell in love. Look at my beautiful site map.

I didn’t just create this sitemap out of nothing! Oh no, I did a task analysis on similar apps, and I also ran an open card sort with x number of my other closest friends. I wanted my foundation to be solid because I was excited to get to the next stage...

Design

Every part is my favorite part, but this is my most favorite part. It was time to start sketching out my ideas in lo-fi mockups!

I used pencil, sharpie, and paper for my initial paper sketches and paper-based prototypes. These prototypes included both a desktop and a mobile version, since this is a web app that should be accessibly in both formats.

First we can see my paper wireframes...

Paper Wireframes

My Figma low-fidelity wireframes...

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

And my low-fidelity clickable prototype!

Low-Fidelity Prototype

Develop

Now that I had my prototype, it was time to test out how the app performs with real users.

I performed usability testing with the prototype of the app. I was able to find 6 participants between the ages of 20 and 50. My participants had 3 tasks to complete during 10 minute sessions, and I rated issues on the Nielson Severity Scale.

I used an affinity map and rainbow spreadsheet to organize my test results, and based on the findings, made several updates to the app.

Rainbow Spreadsheet

App Updates

A before and after image of an Emotional Houseplant screen

While I was making these updates, I also performed A/B testing on the onboarding flow.

Armed with the results of the A/B testing, I started making a style guide and building out the final version of the app for the visual design audit and accessibility audit.

I created a design system and style guide for the app.

Armed with the design system and style guide, I created the high fidelity prototype of the app.

I requested feedback from several peers in the CareerFoundry course, and implemented their feedback where appropriate.

In addition, I evaluated the app based on accessibility principles and made updates where needed.

This app has gone through several iterations on the path to completion, and were I to continue with the project it would go through several more. Below you can see a quick snapshot of the progress of the app over time.

Log-in Screen Iterations

A screenshot of three iterations of the log in screen for Emotional Houseplant

Deliver

Below you can see some screenshots from the final design of the app.

Final Design

Learnings and Next Steps

If this was a project that was build out with real users, I would like to see a baseline of how they are tracking their information before using Emotional Houseplant. After I see that baseline, I would come back 90 days after they started using the app and see how much information they have inputted it.

I would also like to ask the users if they have used the information that they inputted into the app. This would help me understand if my initial hypothesis that using Emotional Houseplant would help users keep track of their medical information is true.
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In the process of building this app, I've learned the importance of testing early and often with real users. I also learned the incredible value of having a community of designers to provide feedback on visual design, as there were some tricky questions that I was struggling with that my peers helped resolve.

I'm very grateful to my peers in the course, and to my other friends who helped me in the development of this app. This was a fun project, and I'm looking forward to more in the future!