Muse™: Mobile App Redesign
Mobile UI • UX Design
Assessed a meditation app and proposed a redesign based on design principles, best practices, and an in-depth evaluation.
Project Overview
This was a semester-long, team-based project for my User Interface Design class I took as a graduate student. My team and I were tasked with evaluating a medical device and its mobile application experience.
The final report was published and featured on UNC Health Sciences Library’s website.
Course:
User Interface Design
(INLS 718, UNC-Chapel Hill)
Duration:
4 months
(Sep. 2018 - Dec. 2018)
Team:
Dottie Blyth
Cami Goray
Rachael Head
Zihao Li
Liz Roknich
Step 1. Establishing Project Goals & Scope
The first step of this project was to meet as a team and define our project objectives, scope, and success metrics, ensuring that we were all on the same page and had similar expectations going into the semester.
Purpose
The purpose of this project was to gain hands-on experience evaluating a current health device from UNC’s Health Science’s Library and proposing a re-design. We wanted to both assess the current state of the application and provide recommendations for future iterations.
Objectives
In order to gauge the success of our project, we identified two quantifiable success metrics:
1. System Clarity: Over 50% of users are able to clearly understand the data provided to them
2. User Satisfaction: Over 50% of users would recommend the new system to a friend
Scope
Our scope was defined primarily by our class instructor as each deliverable for the project had a fixed deadline. In total, everything was to be completed in 3 1/2 months. Additionally, we chose to focus only on the digital app interface, and not evaluate the physical headband.
Step 2. Understanding the Context
After defining our project objectives and scope, we started gathering background information to familiarize ourselves with the context of meditation and mindfulness. Specifically, we researched the Muse™ headband (used for meditation) and its mobile app, as well as the company that designs and manufactures it.
To help familiarize ourselves with the product, we checked out a Muse™ headband from UNC’s library and took turns trying it out for ourselves.
Research Findings:
The system pairs the external headband with a mobile application, where all of the information is stored.
The system uses audio feedback during sessions that correlate to the user’s levels of brain activity; for instance, as the user relaxes, the sounds become more peaceful (e.g. a gentle stream), and if there is a higher level of activity, the sounds become more violent (e.g. heavy rainfall).
After each meditation session, data is recorded so that the user can keep track of their mindfulness progress.
Users are also able to record journal entries of their meditation sessions, complete personal meditation challenges, and share their session results via third-party applications.
Step 3. Understanding the Users
Target audience characteristic chart (click on image to expand)
After familiarizing ourselves with meditation and using the Muse™ headband ourselves, we wanted to get first-hand accounts from other peers outside of our team. We informally spoke to classmates and friends about their experiences with meditation to help better understand potential end-users.
We then synthesized our findings to create a Target Audience Characteristic Chart and three detailed personas (which have been edited down on this page for briefness — view the detailed personas in the final report).
User Personas
Step 4. Creating Use Case Scenarios & a Hierarchical Task Analysis
The next step in our design process was to conduct a hierarchical task analysis on two tasks we felt were most crucial to the system experience. The purpose of this was to understand all the steps that go into one potential use case. As such, we also created use case scenarios for each subtask.
The chart below shows an example of one of the tasks we analyzed, but the complete hierarchical task analysis (along with its use case scenarios) can be found in our final report on page 15.
Hierarchical task analysis for completing a meditation session on the Muse™ app
Step 5. Identifying Problems & Solutions
We then identified 5 potential problems for the system and 5 corresponding design recommendations using literature reviews, universal design principles, and best practices to guide us. These decisions were made as a team and seek to improve the overall functionality and usability of the system.
Design Justifications Table
Step 6. Testing the Prototype
Usability Testing Methodology
After providing design recommendations to the current user interface, my team member Rachael created two interactive prototypes using Adobe XD which was then used for our user testing. We wanted to conduct usability testing to help assess our own prototype, validate our design decisions, and get formative feedback before submitting our final proposal.
We decided to conduct a between-subjects usability test with the independent variable being an icon location placement. We followed a moderator script to ensure consistency across sessions and had 4 pre-determined usability tasks for our participants. Participant demographics and information can be found in the final report.
Usability Testing Results
Based on data gathered from our usability testing, we were able to identify strengths and weaknesses. We used these findings to tweak the initial prototype for system improvements.
The weakness we identified as being most urgent was the lack of accessibility throughout our initial prototype as one of our participants (who self-identified as color-blind) could not distinguish colors on our data visualization dashboard.
Prototype Strengths
Aesthetics
Gamification feature
Prototype Weaknesses
Placement of “session” selector
Toggle design
Lack of accessibility with our color palette
Step 7: Evaluation
Looking back at the project success metrics set at the beginning of the semester, the project can be considered successful as we met both of our goals of improving system clarity and user satisfaction of the app. Internally, we believe the project was successful based on the completion the sequential deliverables which each built upon each other.
Project Takeaway:
UX & UI is more than just creating a beautiful interface.
We were especially conscious to incorporate cognitive psychology and design principles we learned in class throughout each phase of the project and were excited to see how theory can be applied and put into practice. This project helped me realize that UX and UI are not just about creating a beautiful interface, but rather is largely composed of research, rationale, and justifications on why certain decisions are made.