UX/UI CASE STUDY
Building a More Grateful World
Date: 2022 - 2023 | By: Victoria
It all started with a vision of a community centered around gratitude practice.
The Scenario
A group that meets regularly on Clubhouse to share gratitude has gained popularity and a loyal following of thousands. They’ve recently created a Facebook page and begun to research how to register as a nonprofit.
They would love to expand their mission to transform the world through gratitude practice, but currently they lack cohesive online presence.
After getting involved with the group on Clubhouse and noticing positive changes in my life, I propose the creation of a platform that will help the group expand in its mission and reach more people. With the group’s go-ahead, I recruit a team of designers and a developer to collaborate on the project.
Conducting market analysis
As a team, we started by conducting a detailed market analysis, using the SWOT method.
SWOT analysis
Insights:
We noticed many gratitude apps on the market:
lack community
do not offer the ability to share gratitude out verbally
require that users pay upfront to access any features
Understanding the Users
We conducted user research to better understand perspectives and habits related to gratitude practice, studying both seasoned gratitude practitioners and those new to the practice.
37
User Interviews
2
User Surveys
51
Survey Respondents
2
Diary Studies
Developing Information Architecture & User Flows
Next we created a sitemap to better understand how our product should be laid out. We also generated user stories and flows, referring to the personas we’d created for guidance.
Creating Low- and Mid-Fidelity Wireframes for the MVP
For the MVP, we opted to begin with a web app, reducing friction for users as it would be connected to the website and not require an app download, with plans to design a mobile app in the future after launch. We decided to start with a laptop view since users expressed a desire to type their gratitude on a larger screen.
Creating a Brand
We wanted to capture the transformative effect gratitude has, combining it with the international mission of the organization. So we settled on two symbols: a butterfly and a globe.
Word cloud
Mood board
Early logo iterations
Final logo
Conducting Usability Testing
We tested our mid-fidelity product to gather feedback from users, then documented and prioritized issues and suggested changes for improvement.
While there were no catastrophic errors, one issue we identified was that many users were a bit unclear about what to do when they first logged in. We rated this a 2 using the Jakob Nielson severity rating scale, and addressed the issue by adding a tour to orient users to the app.
2
Rounds
13
Participants
Final Mockups
The website contains a store, enabling the group to raise funding while also addressing users' preference for handwriting gratitude, according to the research.
Flexible log-in options for users.
The dashboard includes a challenge, encouraging people to express gratitude through their actions, something that users expressed a desire to do in the research we conducted.
Each user has a gratitude journal. They can keep their entries private or share entries. Prompts and ideas are given to users who may struggle to get started. In addition, users can upload audio entries, which is aligned with many users' preferences according to the research.
A social feed where users can view other people's gratitude or share gratitude in written, video, or audio format. This emulates the Facebook page the group had formed, which was quite popular.
Audio rooms are offered so that users can interact with other users in real-time to share gratitude and discuss various self-care subjects. This emulates the group's room on Clubhouse, bringing it to their own platform.
Results
With effective branding, the group felt more confident moving forward with forming a nonprofit organization.
The group greatly expanded its online presence with effective branding and a revamped website.
The group is currently considering plans to pursue the development of a platform as has been proposed.
I recommend conducting additional research to assess current and prospective members’ receptivity to transitioning from Clubhouse and Facebook to a proprietary app.