PLena App - overview
Plena is an informational holistic lifestyle application designed for the IOS with mobile prototyping.
PLena - Problem
We believe that individuals that want to live a healthy and holistic lifestyle have a lack of resources and knowledge to achieve this goal. Implementing holistic rituals can be difficult when you don’t have knowledge and especially when you have to gather resources and information from several different places.
THE OVERVIEW
By searching your symptoms, you can see all remedies and get some knowledge through it!
Many people enjoy using herbal remedies, attending retreats around the world, getting more knowledge from articles, watching videos to learn about it, but oftentimes no one cares about what you want to do to have a healthier lifestyle, so the purpose of this app was to provide a place for people to get more knowledge from articles and videos, to input their symptoms for using remedies and all services we provided for them.
GOAL
Plena allows individuals to search symptoms, remedies, and purchase products that are holistic. Also, giving the ability to save and compile the content in one central place. Our mission is to help users implement holistic practices into their daily life by providing the resources and information they would need to live out this goal.
TIMELINE
Two weeks
TEAM
Group Project
My Role
Research, Ideation, Visual, Interactive Prototype
In order to achieve our user research experience about the holistic world and the need for it, doing research for our user, we conducted interviews and synthesized the data we received into an affinity diagram categorizing main points to figure out what was important to the user and to get a better understanding of the fields. Also, we conducted user insight, competitor analyses and user interview to learn more about users paint points and their goals.
“Loving myself is my way to improve my health in all areas of my life as an ongoing journey and personal commitment to wellness.”
Behnam Behavesh, Founder & Art director, California
“I have never given any time to know about holistic healthy living. It’s too much commitment.”
Jixnu Chareee, Student, Irvine, CA
Persona
Benam Behmanesh
Male
37yrs
Single no kids
California
Art director & Founder
Pain Points
- He gets quite frustrated when he notices little things bothering him and getting to him.
- He doesn’t like being stresses out and avoids it all costs.
- He especially gets frustrated when he is feeling unwell and can not be as productive as he can.
Goals
- He tries to really take care of himself, making sure he is consuming things that only benefit him.
- exercising and being very mindful of what he uses to fuel himself.
- meditation and reflection helps as well as surrounding himself with like minded individuals that support the lifestyle he is trying to achieve.
Bio
Behnam went to school for art & has always enjoyed and valued the creativity. He reflects within a lot and is a deep thinker, dwelling frequently on things that are beyond us and the wonderful energy in nature. He loves nature, likes to go on hikes and does yoga a few times a week. He likes to cook his own food from organic local product and also has a small garden of his own where he can use vegetables & herbs daily.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
We aimed to improve our user experience, develop branding, and interaction experience between App and users.
In order to achieve our user research experience about the holistic world and the need for it, doing research for our user, we conducted interviews and synthesized the data we received into an affinity diagram categorizing main points to figure out what was important to the user and to get a better understanding of the fields. Also, we conducted user insight, competitor analyses and user interview to learn more about users paint points and their goals.
User's Feedback
Prototyping Iteration Based on feedbacks:
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
In order to reach our goals for designing the App we break it into smaller sub-projects included competitor analysis:
We analyzed competing apps to better understand the market and gain actionable insights. We found the holistic directory, about herbs, holistic, yos, floka and some other applications were designed only to insist one or some holistic health aspects. And from this knowledge, we improved our app to be a centralized place for all aspects of alternative health, providing different resources.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS "DISCOVERY"
In order to reach our goals for designing the App we break it into smaller sub-projects included Value proposition and research:
The World Health Organization estimates that between 65 to 80 percent of the world’s population (about 3 billion people) rely on holistic medicine as their primary form of health care, 74% of the American population desires a natural approach to health care.
And in Learning more about the holistic world and need for it we found (see data above), about 90% of individuals we surveyed would appreciate an application that served as a resource where they can gain knowledge about holistic practices and living. And about 70% of people either always or sometimes rely on holistic treatments. The plan is to partner with businesses worldwide that provide health retreats as to promote and market their services and then companies that have high rated products to then sell on our application and bring revenue.
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS OR POINTS I WANTED TO CALL OUT
User Flow
At the start of visually creating the app, we started with the user flow idea as a foundation to visualize the overview of tasks involved. This was important in our process to provide an outline for the navigation and provide us with a clear objective for our designs.
Storyboarding
This is our story board about Behnam and his journey of searching for holistic resources. This story goes through how he struggled in his search for knowledge and came to find the application.
User Journey Map
To dive deeper, we created a user journey map, which helped us identify the user’s key conflicts by evoking their emotions and past experiences. This helped us with the empathy aspect of feeling for the user and understanding where the need for our solution came from.
Wireframes
Sketches and wireframes were our first step to create our lo-fi prototyping:
We used our sketches to receive feedback before jumping to wireframes and from the wireframe instantly learned that we didn’t have some of the things that were necessary. Initial discussions and tests with peers helped us to prioritize functionalities for the mobile app.
We created and iterated wireframes based on the feedback we gained through the process of testing lower fidelity wireframes, a clickable prototype was then created into a high-fidelity prototype that would further test and gain more accurate feedback.
LESSONS LEARNED "User Testing"
To evaluate the users’ navigating within the app to search symptoms, products and remedies as well as discovering other holistic informational resources that the application provides, we relied on usage metrics in conjunction with 5 usability tests and a set of tasks written out to be followed by the user. This allowed us to gain deeper understanding through combining both qualitative and quantitative information.
At first with our initial iteration the feedback was quite general, pinpointing on visuals, size of buttons and text, since we had a lack of pages.
As our iterations improved and the flows expanded the feedback was a bit more in depth. Bigger questions were being asked in regard to design and how to make it more intuitive, so users don’t have to think twice.
Deciding what’s necessary was a challenge because our app requires a lot of information and text, but we tried to keep it simple and interactive by using components that are known to users. Like the hamburger, arrow buttons to go forward and back, to enable learnability and memorability.
Although users were able to get through the buy or favorite products quickly, some of them didn’t know what retreat being addressed in the main page was, so we decided to delete that section and move it under the yoga and exercise section as a new opportunity for those who want to participate in retreats.
Key Learnings
We spend a lot of time user testing with different iterations including different features. Every user will have a certain preference over the other but honing down your features to the most important ones on the application is quite difficult and takes A LOT of iterations.
Future Opportunities
Doing more research our DB of remedies.
Now we have small DB of remedies and not connected to others.
Partnering with businesses that
hold health retreats such as meditation and yoga, and market them through our app and have users able to purchase through our app as well.
Doing research about top rated holistic products having significant results to feature and sell them through Plena.
More integrity
See Prototyping
