Timeline

9 days

Team

Jacqueline Vujica - UX/UI Designer
Anne Groos - UX/UI Designer

Deliverables

High-fi prototype of mobile app, landing page, presentation deck

Summary

We created a planning and tracking app for people with ADHD as part of a wellness project during de Ironhack UX/UI Design bootcamp. Our mission was to investigate how we could help people with ADHD to live a better life on a daily base with the help of a mobile app.

Role

User research, competitor analysis, user persona and journey, storyboard, defining stage, information architecture, style guide (except logo), design system, low-, mid-, and high fidelity prototype of mobile app incl. testing

01 introduction

The brief

Ironhack presented me with the challenge to create a mobile wellness tracking app. For this project my teammate and I chose to make an app that will help improve the lives of people with ADHD.

I myself have ADD and I see it as both a burden and a superpower which requires a bit more attention and practice in some areas of life.

Before we started with the user research we first got together to talk about what ADHD actually is. Having real-life experience with ADHD definitely helped, but we felt it necessary to gather some more information to get a better understanding of the questions we needed to ask.

02 empathize

Getting to know the user

We received 16 responses and did 3 interviews with people who are diagnosed with ADHD. We could conclude from our research that creating a planning app would make the biggest impact for the lives of people with ADHD.

63%

...said they don’t use any app for managing certain aspects of ADHD

8 people

...in the survey mentioned an app that helps with organizing and remembering tasks would help them with ADHD on a daily basis

Quantitative research

After conducting the quantitative research we found out that concentration was the biggest pain point when dealing with ADHD on a daily basis.

They already found some solutions like breaking down big tasks into smaller ones. We asked them how an app could improve their lives and the most responses were suggesting on helping them with organization.

Qualitative research

For our qualitative research we asked three people with ADHD to tell us more about their organization habits. All three of them tend to procrastinate when a task is too big and overwhelming.

When a task is boring to them, they either not do the task or wait until the very last minute to complete it.

Also short attention span is mentioned a couple of times and they like to write down to-lists that immediately get lost through all the chaos on their desks.

How might we...

We completed the qualitative and quantitative research with three ‘How might we’-questions to take with us throughout the process.

How might we help the user to visually recognize the task better and quicker, so they won’t lose focus?

“I have to-do lists everywhere. Usually I write down my tasks and lose the notes in between the chaos.”

How might we create a feature that efficiently breaks up tasks so that it won’t be so overwhelming for the user?

“I can’t do one thing, I always feel like doing three things at the same time, causing me to get a full and tired mind.

How might we integrate a tracking feature so the user is excited about tracking their task progress?

"Positive feedback from the app is important as otherwise the mind will be distracted and it will stray off."

03 competitor analysis

Investigating what is already in the market

Parallel to conducting the user research — we wanted to find out what kind of apps already on the market to help people with ADHD.

Competitor feature analysis

We found out that there aren’t many apps that focus specifically on ADHD. We could only find two. Brili focuses on building and managing daily routines and Inflow offers an educational program with personal coaching. We also wanted to include other apps that are being used by - but not build for- people with ADHD.

Feature analysis

Market position

We used the market analysis mapping tool to see which apps have a tracking feature and how prominent it is in the app. On the horizontal line we wanted to see if the apps are prioritized on organizing daily life or more on mindfulness.

With our app we wanted to aim high on tracking to make the user more excited about following their progress. And also lean more towards the organizational side to work on concentration problems when working on daily tasks.

Visual analysis

Collecting visual information on the competitors made us better understand the way these apps communicate to their users. We noticed that they all use a soft color palette and easy readable fonts. They keep their layout clean, with as minimal distractions as possible.

04 define

Identifying user's problems

We collected some demographics from the user research. Since we focus on a niche market it was hard to get many responses. In the end we did collect enough information to create our user persona based on the research.

User persona

75%

25–34 years

63%

Male

50%

Dutch

Thomas Klaver is a 29 year old freelance photographer from Amsterdam who has ADHD. He has many varying interests including plantology and writing. He wants to switch to a new career path and chose to get an Art History degree to become a museum curator. Due to past experiences with ADHD, he fears that he will have problems planning and organization. He wants to get more self confidence in this area and wants to see more of the positive side of ADHD.

User journey

We took Thomas on a journey of what would happen if he had a big assignment coming up for his new studies in Art History.

05 the challenge

Final brief

Now that it was clear to us that concentration and organization is the biggest challenge for people with ADHD, the next step was creating a problem statement to round up our research and a hypothesis statement to measure our success on.

Problem statement

We have observed that people with ADHD have a difficult time concentrating on tasks, which leads them to forget the task or fail to complete them. How can we help them stay focused and complete their tasks successfully?

Hypothesis statement

We believe that creating a planning app for people with ADHD/ ADD will help them finish the tasks and gain more self confidence . We will know that we are successful if the users use the app consistently.

06 Information architecture

Mapping the structure
of the app

Organizing the information in a workable structure is the next step. This gave us clarity about which screens we had to design and how many steps the user needs to take to complete the user flow.

Sitemap

First we set up a sitemap to see where we would place the different screens. We didn't want to overwhelm the user, so we kept it as simple as can be with only the necessary items.

User flow

Via the jobs-to-be-done method, we wanted to see what main job we could base our user flow on. We focussed on setting up a task. This includes the whole process, because in order to create a task, the user needs to create a goal first.

07 ideation

Searching for ideas

With the structure mapped out it was time to create low-fi’s to get some ideas on paper. We each made our own and communicated on how we wanted the app to work and navigate.

Mid-fidelity

Here you see a part of the mid-fidelity prototype. The top flow is for adding a new goal and the second flow is for completing a task and checking the total progress of completed tasks.

Usability test

We put the mid-fi up for usability testing and gave the participants four tasks to complete along with a couple of questions.

Task 1: Create a goal
Task 2: Create a task
Task 3: Change the priority of a task
Task 4: Mark a task as completed

Good

Users have no trouble navigating the app. Interestingly 89% said that seeing statistics of your task progress would make planning more fun.

Bad

Changing the priority on the task page was a bit confusing and someone mentioned that “There was too much information on the first page”.

08 styleguide

Styleguide

We named our app Vasty. V.A.S.T. is a new acronym for ADHD. It stands for Variable Attention Stimulus Trait. Which is more encouraging than naming it a ‘disorder’. The mascot of the Vasty app is a squirrel. These little rodents are hyperactive, but are really good at planning their supply of nuts for their winter sleep.

Principles

The Vasty app’s principles are Simple, Organized and Soothing. Making people with ADHD comfortable with using the app without feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated. This also reflects in the use of colors and font.

09 solution

High fidelity prototype

We used our mid-fi results to include changes in our high-fi and styled our prototype with the help of our Style Guide. We are super happy with the result!

The VASTY app is a visual planner that helps the user to prioritize tasks and motivates to complete goals by tracking their productivity progress

High-fidelity tests & iterations

We did two usability tests, an accessibility test, memory test and a heuristic evaluation to make changes where necessary on the high-fidelity prototype. In total we did two redesigns, making sure to minimize as much information and steps in the user flow as we could to make the design more accessible and clear for people with ADHD. Read the full re-design story on Medium.

Landingpage

After completion of the app, the next step was to create a landing page to transfer our mission onto the user. Important for us was to make it clear to the user how the app works, what features they can expect, what other users are saying about the app and where they can download it.

We conducted a desirability test to find out what the users attitudes are towards the VASTY app. The three main outcomes where: clear, meaningful and creative.

10 Conclusion

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed working on this project and I am super happy with the end result. Thank you Jacqueline for being my teammate in this project!

Next steps

The first step would be to test the app specifically for a longer period with our target group, people with ADHD. And interview them afterwards to collect information on how they experienced the app and if it truly improves their lives on a daily basis. We would also love to do more in depth research on their behavioral patterns with digital devices. To see if we can find some new ideas to make this app even more specialized for people with ADHD.

Key learnings

For this project we were working with a niche target group. Which made it harder to find candidates for our research. But luckily we worked it out in the end. We also had to do a couple of new things, like making a landing page to market the app. And we tried to perform a memory test. Unfortunately a lot of candidates who took the test were too tired or didn’t understand the assignment well enough to remember the questions afterwards. 10 seconds was also not enough time to memorize the screen. BUT next time will be better!

A planning app to help people with ADHD accomplish their goals