Project Summary

Over the course of five weeks, my partner and I were tasked with creating a mobile app which came to life as Releaf, a stress-relieving app made to provide employees with a way to relax, reset, and prioritize their mental health throughout a long work day as well as after hours. 

The Problem

Our team found that users who experience work-induced stress need a way to identify their feelings, prioritize their well-being, and find relief from work-related anxiety. By accomplishing this, users could reduce and manage their stress levels so that at the end of the day, they are more relaxed and able to leave work at the office.

The Solution

Releaf offers employees easy stress-identification tools, coupled with suggested relief techniques based on user preferences. Releaf also promotes office well being, company bonding, and respect for colleague availability, all while encouraging employees to focus on their mental health not just at the office but at home too. Overall, we wanted to identify a way to keep up company morale by caring for employees and recognizing that work is not the most important thing in life. 

User Research

Research Objectives

1. How do people manage their stressors?

• What tools or methods do they use?

• When or at what point do you expel/or not expel your frustrations from certain stressors?

2. In what way does this affect those around you?

• What are their responses?

• Do you feel supported by their reactions?

Participant Demographic

Our team was looking to target the Millennial demographic, both men and women, between the age of 26 and 35. Our users would most likely have a busy work schedule and might feel easily overwhelmed with the day-to-day stress and emotions that go hand-in hand with simply being young with a lot on their plate. 

Interviews & Survey

Chelsea and I conducted 4 virtual interviews. Each of the interviews included full transcriptions. Each interviewee was asked a series of questions regarding the ways in which they deal with stress and the tools they might use to express their emotions - talking with others, physical activity, creative outlets, etc.  We also conducted a survey through Google Forms that was posted to various social media platforms. Overall, we totaled 4 user interviews, 9 survey responses, and 147 research points.

How do you define the term stress? Do you ever feel stressed and how often do you think you feel this way?

• "An overwhelming feeling created by things we can, but often can't control."

• "A feeling of anxiety about something I can't control, but seems to loom in the future."

How do you deal with feelings of stress? What tools or methods do you use to relax?

• "I make a list of things I'll try and accomplish each day along with a detailed schedule to follow."

• "Listening to music, sitting by a pool or by the water, traveling, swimming, writing my thoughts down. Just trying to find the solutions.

What do you think triggers your feelings of stress?

• "Having a lot of work to do and not knowing how I'll get it all done."

• "Not being in control of a situation or having too many things on my plate at one time." 

 Affinitization

After many discussions and analyzing our interview data, we were able to group our responses into a number of different categories related to stress. We eventually came up with 12 different stress-related categories pertaining to stress control, stress triggers, and the effects of stress. Feel free to ask for a more in depth look into this process! With so much information, main points and finds tend to become blurry and aren’t clearly depicted on tiny post its.

Definition

User Persona

With knowledge of who our users were, how they perceived stress, and the idea that work was one of the biggest stressors in their lives, we created our user persona, Gabi Ruiz. Gabi is a Senior Tech Recruiter and organized individual, who needs a way to find relief from work-related stress and the struggles that accompany that stress in order to maintain a happy, healthy life.

 Feature Prioritization Matrix

 Value Proposition Canvas

 User Journey Map

Prototyping

Competitor Analysis

We chose to focus on two core meditation and well being apps, the first being Calm, which seemed to be the most popular and well known, and the second was Moodpath. We were able to analyze each app and discovered a number of similarities between the two, and also noticed we had discussed similar features during our ideation phase. 

Calm App

Moodpath App

 Task Flow

Onboarding

In App

Sketches

If you look at the first sketch, you can see that we started with the name DeskStop however, as the project evolved, we changed it to Releaf which sounded more soothing and evoked a sense of calmness.

 Lo-Fidelity Prototypes

Final Thoughts

Over the course of this project, we were presented with a user demographic largely affected by work-induced stress. To solve this problem, we developed Releaf, a way for users to be mindful of and prioritize their mental health throughout the day, a mindset we found to be rare for those with a busy schedule. Through research, ideation, and testing, we were able to see our product grow into something that would be beneficial for users not only at the office, but after hours as well.