MindShift Redesign
For this project, I needed to redesign an already existing app. I choose the app MindShift, an anxiety companion app. Throughout the process, I’ve created a number of different artifacts, including user research, information architectures, and a high-fidelity prototype.
Below is a detailed summary of this process, including each artifact that was created.
Competitive Analysis
To begin the process, I performed a competitive analysis to see how MindShift compares to other stress relieving apps. Through this analysis, I found that there was a surprisingly large market for stress relief apps. Their user bases were much larger than MindShifts, some clocking in over 700k reviews. With this in mind, I knew I had to do something to make MindShift stand out, giving the user a reason to choose it over the alternatives.
User Interview’s and Empathy Map
For user interviews, I performed two different interviews and ended up finding two entirely different user bases. For my first interview, my participant didn’t have anxiety problems himself, but knew people who did and wanted to know if there was any way to help. My other interviewee had anxiety issues, so I was able to see what they might want out of an app like this. These interviews helped show me the variety of users the app may have, as well as how I may have to accommodate for those different users.
Persona
Knowing what potential audience I may have, I created a persona to better understand what they may need. My persona focused more on the second user interview, someone who has intense anxiety and wants help with it. I found the frustrations particularly helpful, as I found many people’s issues with anxiety stems largely from not knowing how to deal with it and who to open up about it to. By having a place to learn and vent, this app could help solve the needs of this potential user and many others.
Information Arch
Knowing what my users will need, I began creating the structure of the app. One of the biggest issues I found with the original is the lack of clarity in the navigation. I and my user interviews found it difficult at times to find what they wanted. Knowing that, I tried to make the navigation fairly simplistic, having screens such as “Learn” be the same for each type of anxiety, making it easier for the user to grasp at a glance. Despite some of those issues though, I kept a lot of the core features such as goal setting and quick relief
Wireframes
When creating the wireframes, clarity was my main goal, similar to the info arch. For starters, I completely cut the idea of a user account. I felt people being forced to create an account after downloading this app will only increase anxiety and serve no real purpose in the grand scheme of the app. I also wanted information about the anxiety disorders themselves to be easily accessible, so that anybody can quickly find and learn about them.
Mock Ups
With everything else put into place, I began putting in the details such as color and type. For color, I wanted lighter, calmer colors. This helps give the app a calming feeling in general. I also made sure the type was very light, not being too overbearing for the users.
For the mockups themselves, I made three separate ones, choosing select screens to sample the different styles with. A dark mode option was also made for each screen. Overall, the first mockup ended up being the main basis, though for screens such as “Learn”, I used different mockups since I felt they were more effective.
