LAUGHTER LAB
A mental health app that keeps you coming back
Summary
I designed an app that would encourage users to laugh more in order to improve overall mental and physical health, with the intention of making laughter yoga a daily practice to relieve stress and bring more joy.
Goal of Interview
I wanted to discover how people deal with stressful situations and how important it was to deal with those associated negative feelings in order to maintain a healthy state of mind. I also wanted to find out how open people were to using a "mindfulness" app.
Takeaway
All users agreed that it's important to improve and maintain mental health. They were open to the idea of using an app to improve mood and all have tried to use mindfulness apps. Users found that a lot of apps involved too much effort, so they usually stopped using them.
Go to prototype
HYPOTHESIS
Based on user feedback, I hypothesized that offering minimal content and features would make users more inclined to use them more frequently, instead of abandoning a plethora of content and app entirely.
The following research methods were to see if I could prioritize essential features and answer the questions:
"If having regular every day laughter is the main task of the app, what features would be complimentary to the user journey?"
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"What features from popular mindfulness apps are often unused or cause a hinderance in user flow?"
PERSONA:
Kathy Ngo
Business owner
“I don’t want to have an app that makes me think but still holds me accountable for my mental health.”
Biography
Kathy is a 32-year-old owner of a small plant shop in D.C.. She spends most of her days at the shop handling sales and inventory and doesn't get home until 7pm or later. She is also a wife and mother of two children under the age of eight.
Core Needs
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Use a mindfulness app that is simple and easy to use​
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Keep track of her happiness/mental health
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Decrease stress on a daily basis
Frustrations
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The apps she's tried using in the past have too many features
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She tends to give up on keeping track of mental health if she feels the app is too much work
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She wants to work on her stress levels but needs motivation and incentive to actually use the app
FEATURE
ANALYSIS
With insight from a card sort and feature analysis, I wanted to get a general sense of the content under each category while being cognizant of features I thought would be cool versus features that were necessary for user growth. I decided to place most important features directly affecting laughter sessions under "Today". Anything else could be accessed as needed. The next step would be to test the efficiency of the organization.
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The only laughter yoga-related app acted as more of an info hub
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Most apps had the ability to save content
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Connecting to social media was not evident, possibly intentional
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There were too many options and features when deciding on a meditation session
SITE MAP
REDESIGN
Based on user interviews, most people tended to abandon features on mindfulness apps due to feeling overwhelmed. I decided to prioritize features that helped achieve the main task, completing a laughter session.
DEVELOP
To address the concern of delayed task completion, I designed a path for users that enabled them to start a laughter session immediately upon log in-- less than 3 seconds. Even if a user chooses key features, which are also accessible upon log in, the initiation of a laughter session would still be less than 5 seconds. Features such as record and assisted laughter, it would also be saved from the previous session to make completion of task faster. My first usability test showed having the tools to complete a laughter session upfront was highly effective. I still had roadblocks concerning the menu items: ​
Usability Testing Phase I
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100% users located Laughter button
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20% users were confused with content in Preferences vs. Settings
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There was a 50% mis-click when asked to locate the calendar under the category “My Stats”.
Iteration
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​​“My Stats” was renamed to “Monthly Streak”
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Based on competitive research, “Settings” was placed in the upper right corner of “Profile” page
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“Preferences” was renamed to “Laughter Session Settings” and placed under “Settings”
Usability Testing Phase II
Additionally, I tested main features such as setting the time and where to go to change voice settings.
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75% of users were able to complete task with no mis-clicks
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2 people abandoned task
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User feedback suggested content like "monthly streak" and laughter session settings were easy to locate
PROTOTYPE
After Phase II of usability testing, I wanted to follow through with these questions:
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What if there was a level of support and connectivity among users?
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What if people challenged each other to laugh more?
To a sense of camaraderie, community, and accountability among users, I added the feature, "laughter challenges" for users to stay motivated together and receive incentives.
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I also took advantage of gamification by creating avatars to add another source of accountability and humor.
Choose a fun avatar to share your journey with
Daily message
from your avatar
Friends using app can participate in laughter challenges with incentives
TAKEAWAYS
This passion project made me very optimistic after getting user feedback. The goal is to simply get more people to consciously laugh more and see their mood and health change on a noticeable level. I would love to do more usability testing with other features and even with a more long-term timeframe, like a month, to see the effectiveness of the app on a larger scale.