Timeline
Jan - Apr 2020 |
4 months
Supervisors
Alexander Manu
S.Reza Mortezaei
Tools
Adobe Suite
Blender
Skills
Trend Analysis
UX Research
UI Design
Outcome
Simplistic, user
friendly app that
promotes mindful
practices
The Practice of Mindfulness Through AI
This project is an introduction to AI guided meditation as a means of facilitating meditation practices. Luna is an AI companion that guides users through meditative experiences and helps them document their emotional growth and journey. This app is aimed to help people develop effective coping methods. Luna provides people with the tools to navigate difficult situations when they feel depressed, anxious or stressed. This AI technology acts as an aid by implementing these meditation practices when people are faced with negative emotional reactions.
The Problem
When it comes to meditation and mindfulness apps, it can be tedious and tiresome for users to make a habit of practicing mindfulness on a daily basis or developing a routine from it. This is due to a lack of knowledge on how to practice meditation, and it being difficult to stay focused. There is barely any interactivity when using any mindfulness app, or ability to help users be consistent with their mindful practices.
Project Objective
The objective is to create a tool that helps redefine the approach towards mindful practices. To enhance and improve users' coping methods through the implementation of AI, biometrics, and other technologies.
Project Intention
I wanted to create an app that specializes in facilitating meditative practices. Aimed towards people that want to have a different approach to how they react to and cope with their emotions. Creating a seamless experience that helps visualize a person's progress and help keep track of their thoughts and emotions.
Approach
In the course of my thesis year at OCAD University, I was given the freedom and opportunity to follow a passion project. Prior to starting my thesis project, certain events occured in my life which influenced the direction the project took. It made me question my integrity as a designer and type of designer I wanted to be. In this case a physical or digital product designer. My focus on creating something that improved and enhaced a person's emotional well-being, I wanted to create something that helped people rethink their process of dealing with unwanted emotions and translating them into healthy coping practices.
Discover &
Empathize
Research
Empathy Map
Define & synthesize
User Personas
User Insights
Competative Analysis
Opportunity
develop & ideate
Value Proposition
Value Statement
MOSCOW
Journey Map
Design & prototype
Wireframes
High-fidelity
App Layout
design & test
Meet Luna!
Insight
The Mental Health industry as it exists today isn’t serving people as well as it could. It can sometimes take weeks, even months to get a consultation with a mental health professional, and for those who do not have insurance these services can be out of reach economically. On the other hand, mindfulness practices are proven to be very beneficial to people dealing with stressful situations.
Self-improvement products and apps have become a trend and a favored topic in the past few years. When inspecting the available mindfulness apps, most are a collection of guided meditation recordings with one thing in common, they all lack the interactive approach you may get from an actual Guru or Yogi. But also some of these apps become monotonous after being used. Wearables such as biometrics or VR/AR technologies should be taken into consideation when pushing midfulness experience onwards, since wearables are already influencing our daily lives and the future.
Idea
Through the research, insight and personal influences, I decided to develop an app that helps people achieve a balanced state of mind and a mindful state of living. The Luna app will serve as an AI companion which will aid the user throughout their mindfulness experience. Through the use of biometrics Luna will bring a focus to a user's breathe and heart rate as it comes to a relaxed state. Luna will also display live visuals of a user's progress through the implementation of an animated tree, the user has to take care of it by meditating and taking care of their mental health. Also, by alerting users when their stress levels are rising, reminding them to take a breather when needed. Luna works as a thought tracker that helps document your thought and ideas through the in-app journal.
Impact
Meditation and breathwork are mindful practices that have impacted not just me, but many others when tryng to achieve a balanced state of mind. AI guided meditation can enhance this mindful experience by facilitating the process of meditation. Luna becomes a companion, someone you can rely on and someone that will be there for you during difficult chapters in your life. Helping people improve their lives by aiding them through this journey of self-improvement and pushing them to become the best self they can be.
Discover
Empathize & Research
Primary Research: Emotional Intelligence
The firts half of thesis was mostly based on understanding why people felt the way they did, and why people reacted they way they did when faced with stressful sitations.
Empathy Map
To get a better understanding of our targeted user, I used an empathy map to help define their perspectives and their needs. The map covers 5 major categories: what they do, see, say, hear and feel.
Define
Synthesis & Insight
User Personas
The following personas were developed to get insight into a user's personality, thought process, motivations and interests. Also to help us understand the type of challenges users face when trying to meditate or attempt mindful practices. These personas were developed using the synthesized data collected during the reasearch stage of the project.
User Insights
Creating these personas helped me define the following problems:
Users have a hard time staying focused when trying mindful practices
Users have difficulty when it comes to consistency when practicing mindfulness
Users don't know how to properly practice mindfulness
Competitive Analysis
When looking into self-care app/resources. My main focus was on the demographic and perfomance of the following app. I wanted to see where Luna would fit in compared to the available resources in the marketplace. When analyzing apps like Headspace, Calm, or Retreat, I noticed that one thing they all have in common is just being pre-recorded mindfulness sessions that lack an interactive approach towards users. Apps like Pause and #Selfcare have a more playful approach when it comes relieving stress, but become monotonous after a couple times of being used. Other resources like Muse, Soul 7, and EmbodyRelax are a bit more interactive and process user inputs when practicing midnfulness, but in order to get the full experience it requires extra hardware.
Opportunity
After looking into the competitive analysis, I have concluded that in order to have an effective product launch I should take the following into consideration:
Have an more interactive approach when practicing mindfulness.
Develop an engaging platform that entices users to keep applying mindful practices to their daily routines
Use wearables to help amplify and expand on this mindful experience, but not have to rely on extra hardware to have access to this experience
Develop
Ideate
Value proposition
I used a value proposition canvas to understand how the user's needs are going to be met through this service. My focus was brought to the types of jobs a user needs to go through when practicing mindfulness and what I could develop to help/improve that experience.
Value Statement
An AI self-care companion that applies mindful practices as a means to develop preferable coping mechanisms.
Feature Prioritization (MOSCOW)
Must
Must facilitate and help people develop coping methods through mindful practices
Should
Should become part of people's daily routine
Could
Could motivate people to apply these practices during different stages of their lives
Would
Would create a community of people that partake in a mindful way of life
Journey Map
I used journey mapping as means to understand how the user would react when onboarding the presented app/service. I took into consideration the feelings, and thoughts a user may have through the onboarding process. Looked into the actions and channels they could use, the type of pains and challenges they may run into and provided relievers and solutions.
Design
Prototype
Wireframes
High-Fidelity
