H2Often

The what

Habits: “make” them and/or brake them. I was challenged to come up with an idea for a mobile app intended to create or break a habit. But it was no easy feat and below you can see why:

Step 1: choose a general area and conduct interviews (for the first time)
Step 2: gather the results and translate them into an idea and features
Step 3: sketch a lo-fi prototype and test and iterate
Step 4: design a mid-fi prototype and test and iterate
Step 5: test and iterate some more and decide when it is enough (or when the time runs out)
Step 6: present

All that in “just” 4 days (oof!)

Look…

To understand the users and their pains, it was necessary to talk to them.

Parameters:

(some) Questions:

“What habits do you have that you consider healthy?”
“Do you exercise?” (what do you do and how many times a week)
“Tell me about last weekend.”
(after a while) “How is your water intake?”
“Is it the same on weekends?”

Note: I realized how hard it is to ask open questions, without any bias. To learn it is was (and is) a valuable lesson.

… and you will find

These were the main findings of the research:

9/9 have some type of exercise 3 times a week or more
6/9 cook their own food
8/9 didn’t think of drinking water as a habit at first
6/9 forget to drink water during the day, thus drinking way less than necessary
7/9 drink significantly less water on weekends
6/9 tried to keep track of their intake with a bottle (but still forgot them on the weekends)

Why?

The problem.

People constantly feel concerned about their health and being hydrated is an important part of it. They usually need to drink more water, but keep forgetting about it during the day and afterwards have no idea how much they drank.

Who

Based on the interviews, I came up with a persona. She was referred to throughout the entire development process.

Meet Anna!

Anna is a 31-years-old Java programmer living in Amsterdam. She likes to cook, play PC games and hang out with close friends. She keeps her sanity by running three times a week.

Goals

Be more disciplined in her hydration
Keep track of her water intake

Pains

Keeps forgetting to drink water
Weekends are especially difficult because she is usually out
She drinks some glasses of water here and there, never really knowing how much she drank during the day

Where

A scenario

Anna works sitting down all day, 5 days a week. To keep herself healthy, she needs to keep her hydration on point, but keeps forgetting. Weekends are even worse, since she goes out and gets even more distracted.

&

How

A possible solution

An app that is simple but that makes it fun for the user to keep track of their water intake. To put that out of words, a lo-fi prototype was made and tested, resulting in a mid-fi that you can check below.

But who is Oscar?

The inspiration for the app came from the mascot we had on Irohack’s bootcamp: that’s right, it was a pink octopus plushie named Oscar (though some people swore it was a squid?). In trying to solve people’s problem on tracking their water intake, I looked at the pink thing smiling at me and the idea came: “what if the person’s water consumption is directly related to Oscar’s tank?”

Help Oscar to stay happy – and alive!

Testing & changes

Users asked (and commented) and were answered! When testing, the users pointed out a few things and I tried to incorporate them into the final design:

And more testing & more changes

A few users mentioned that it would be interesting to have stats about the intake of the previous weeks as well, as a means of comparison:

Aaand more testing & changes

An important feedback from testing was that the prototype should have an easy way to track your intake progress during the day:

Creating the Mid-fidelity UI Design

Once I tested out all usability mistakes, I started designing the final screens in Figma.

In order to help the users to remember to drink water, I chose to gamify the process. Like a Tamagotchi, the user has to pay a little bit of attention to the app to keep Oscar alive, hydrating throughout the process. Considering this, the design went to a more kid video-game kind of thing, to match with the concept.

A result of listening to the user

After listening to the interviewees pains and taking the users’ observations, this what we wound up with:

an app directed to hydrate more - and only that! No excessive nuisance
it reminds the user to hydrate - and to take the bottle on weekends to keep it up!
weekend challenge: an incentive to drink more on the weekends
gamified to help people remember - they don’t want Oscar to die! (Tamagotchi inspiration)