Self Balance.
A Mental Wellbeing App.
I created and developed Self Balance over 9 months (part time) as part of my UX Immersion course with Career Foundry.
Overview.
-
The Brief
To create an interactive health and wellness app. I decided to focus on mental health because it is a cause I feel strongly about.
Mental health apps allow people to take action and feel like they have control where they may not otherwise have that as an option.
-
The Problem
Mental health is fluid however, people do not want to use a mood tracker as they associate it with poor mental health. Using mental health related terminology adds to this and can be off putting.
People frequently continue with negative behaviour, even if it is bad for them. They can only see the negative feelings, not what has contributed to it.
-
The Solution
Self-Balance focuses on mental wellbeing. It is a daily tracking app where users rate the effort of activities in their day-to-day life and compare how they weigh against their state of mind.
By tracking this over time, users will be able to see the correlation between a balance of work and play and their own mental wellbeing.
Self-Balance allows users to personalise the application so that it reflects the activities in their own lifestyle and it also uses neutral non-clinical language.
In Action.
A brief demo of Self Balance and the features which make up the Help Balance aspect of the app.
My Design Process.
-
Research & Understanding
Competitive Analysis
User Survey & Interviews
Personas
Problem Statements & Hypothesis
-
Ideate & Design
User Journey Mapping
Task Analysis & User Flows
Site Mapping
Wire Frames: low, mid & high
(Balsamiq & Adobe XD)
-
Testing & Iterative Design
Prototypes
Usability Testing:
(Moderated Usability Test, Preference test)
-
Handing Over
Design Documentation
Final Prototype
Research & Understanding
Competitive Analysis.
There were two main ways in which I found these apps lacking and these made up the main basis of Self Balance:
If there was a way to log what you have done in the day, it was very rigid. There was no acknowledgment that people would feel differently about tasks they do.
Once you have acknowledged that you’re in a low mood, there isn’t a clear action to change that.
User Survey.
A Typeform online survey asking participants what they do to maintain their mental health.
38 people took part, the age range was 22-73 with the majority in 35-44 group.
Only 3 out of 38 of participants had used an app designed for mental health, I wanted to explore this further.
All participants answered an optional question about mental health issues, only 4 out of 38 stated they had never suffered from any issues.
User Interviews.
Interview scripts were flipped from the initial survey, it was focused on what has negative effects on participants mental health. This would identify their needs and goals.
I used insights gained from the survey to choose which areas I wanted to delve into deeper and to help shape the goals of the my interview.
When asking about people’s routine, I specifically asked about pre covid as well as current times to ensure that answers were not focused on a very specific period that isn’t representative.
Insights.
I used infinity mapping as part of my discovery progress to pull out relevant data on each of the participants and then to regroup them into insights.
An example of the insights gathered:
Regarding activities: There are very few activities that are either draining or uplifting alone. Most require some form of effort and are usually a least give small amount of reward in return.
Those who have not considered an app: They feel like they either do not have a problem with their mental health, or that they do not have a big enough problem that they would seek out an app.
Personas.
These proved vital in decision making later down the line. I would refer back to these to remind myself what I was designing for.
Problem Statement and Hypothesis.
Our User needs a simple way to gauge their daily mental health because a busy lifestyle can lead to poor self-awareness of mental wellbeing.
We will know this to be true when our user is able to see their health declining and take action, or see their health is stable and maintain their healthy habits.
Ideate and Design
App Features.
-
Personalised activities:
Self Balance lets you add and schedule the activities that make up your life.
Users rate each activity with the amount of effort and reward gained by its completion.
-
(Daily) Check In:
Users rate how their day has been with one touch.
Ideally done daily, but user can change to suit their lifestyle.
Reminded to complete by a notification set up by the user.
-
(Weekly) Review:
By completing a review of their data regularly, users can see the correlation between high and low effort/ reward activities and their emotional wellbeing.
Reminded to complete by a notification set up by the user.
-
Help Balance:
Triggered when a user’s balance has tipped too far in one direction (too much effort/ reward and check in is averaging low).
The user is taken to their activities and guided to choose some to help balance them back out.
User Journey.
To help show the process used to complete goals. This was especially important for this app because being able to visual these habits and behaviours would help massively when designing an app that will be used daily.
Task Analysis and User Flows.
Creating user flows really helped me flesh out the design of the app. It showed what would be a viable solution (keep it simple) and what was just too complicated.
Site Map.
A card sort to helped me finalise my site map, it worked well to see where participants placed different features.
It was important to use co-existing hierarchies as there is some overlap in the features of the app. It would be frustrating for users to have to return back to dashboard to navigate to these.
Low and Mid Fidelity Wireframes.
I used pencil and paper to sketch out how the user flows would work. I then moved on my laptop to put together my basic design for Self Balance.
High Fidelity Wireframes/ Prototype
-
![]()
Dashboard
-
![]()
Activities
-
![]()
Add Activity
-
![]()
Gym Session
-
![]()
Help Self Balance
-
![]()
Self Check In Review
-
![]()
Schedule Activity
Testing and Iterative Design
Usability Testing.
I conducted a moderated usability test with 6 participants.
The goal was to assess the learnability for new users. I wanted to observe and measure if users understood the app, it’s value and how to navigate core functions such as self check-in and adding activties.
I carried out some of the test sessions over zoom, this removed geographical constraints while also allowing me to be mindful of any concerns over Covid.
-
Insights.
I utilised affinity mapping to easily visualise findings. I then used a rainbow spreadsheet to collate it all together and start classifying the errors I had found. By applying an adapted version of Jakob Nielsen’s four-step rating scale, I was able to decide what issues took priority and start coming up with solutions.
-
Two important changes I made:
An important visual feature. The type of scales I originally used as a graphic representation of a user’s balance was a “justice“ style scale. This received a small amount of negative feedback. As it is one of the main components of the dashboard and an integral part pf the app, I changed it to a “swing” style scale.
The naming convention of the app functions. The majority of them started with “self“ to link them together and tie in to the app name, however this mainly caused confusion with similarly named features. I removed “self” in an effort to make the app simple and user friendly.
Review Icon, Design Iteration
Iterative Design.
Some of the features of the app do not have conventional names, so iterative design was particularly important in figuring out which designs worked for their icons.
For Review, I initially started with stars being used for the icon however feedback had shown that it was unclear what the feature was used for. Therefore I moved to the current icon of a document with a magnifying glass, to indicate that the user would be reviewing their own data.
Design Evolution.
-
Dashboard.
My original low fidelity, pen and paper wireframe.
-
High fidelity used for usability testing. Following testing insights, I changed this from “justice“ to “swing” style scales.
-
As I further developed the “swing style” scale, it made sense to move away from a clinical looking set of scales to a more nature based one.
-
Following peer review, it seemed that maybe the dashboard was too simple. I added information so that users would know where this information was coming from.
Handing Over
Final Wireframes.
-
![]()
Onboarding 1
-
![Onboarding 2]()
Onboarding 2
-
![Onboarding 3]()
Onboarding 3
-
![Onboarding 4]()
Onboarding 4
-
![Onboarding 5]()
Onboarding 5
-
![Sign Up/ Login]()
Sign Up/ Login
-
![]()
Dashboard
-
![Check In]()
Daily Check In
-
![Uneven Dashboard, Effort]()
Uneven Dashboard- Effort
-
![Uneven Dashboard, Reward]()
Uneven Dashboard- Reward
-
![]()
Help Balance
-
![]()
Check In Review
-
![]()
Activities
-
![]()
Add Activity
-
![]()
Schedule Activity
Design Documentation.
Including information on accessibility and background information to assist in creation.
Conclusion.
As Self Balance is a personal project there were aspects that were quite difficult, an obvious one was receiving constructive criticism from my peer review on my designs. However I was ready for this able to keep a distance and take on board the feedback and action where required. It is important to weigh up the suggestions for change though, not all need to be actioned- and this was what I took away from this process. When trying to act on feedback on the rating scale I designed, I ended up making the decision to prioritise simplicity and kept my design as it was, happy that I could justify this (further information on this in my design iteration examples).
The part I was not expecting to find so difficult was my user interview research. As I had used personal contacts and due to the nature of the questions, I ended up listening to my participants talk about some hard times and realisations. It made me feel quite helpless. However I was able to channel this into creating my personas and making sure I covered their emotional journey- this also reinforced my belief that UX design is another way of helping people and a good choice as career change for me.
Mental health has such a wide range, is was easy to get carried and try to cover too much when thinking of what should be included in the app, but this is where the research and user personas were really invaluable. Referring back to these, helped me keep on track and remember that what was needed was something simple and easy and I’m really proud of what I’ve designed!