Design Principles

I established some design principles to help support the app. One I want to focus on though is intuitiveness.

• Main sections have a home

• Navigation is predictable

• Consistent iconography

• Data will be laid out easily

• App responds to the user

Next, I worked on compiling user interviews.

User Interviews

Our focus is on the sign-up process since that's where the reduced task on time comes from.

I asked, "Do you typically sign up for mood-tracking apps to save your info and track your mood?

One user said no. The other two users I interviewed said yes, they typically sign up for the service.

At the time, I knew I was going to include a sign-up / login process for the app. But I didn't decide on where I was going to stick it. All I knew from user interviews and my design principles, was that I would have a minimal, calming, and intuitive app experience.

At the same time as interviews, I was looking at competitors. They afforded me some more insights.

Competitive Analysis

I noticed that none of the apps I looked at had sign-up / login outside of settings. One didn't have it at all. It wasn't in onboarding which is where I eventually stuck it to reduce task on time.

It was at this moment that I knew I wanted to include the sign-up process in settings. That's where I was seeing it. That's where it made intuitive sense to place it. I didn't realize that it wasn't that intuitive to place it only in that location until after my first round of usability testing.

I applied my comprehensive findings to a user persona and a user journey map. I then marked up the app interface in low-fidelity wireframes.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

I decided to stick the sign-up / login process on the settings screen. It was at this moment that I decided I wanted to test that as an action for usability testing.

You would get to settings from the main bottom navigation. Then the second button would take you to the sign-up / login screen.

After, I created user flows and an application flow. Next came the wire flows.

Wire Flows

Here I show what the process is like to sign-up / login into the app. First users tap the settings icon. Then they find and tap the sign-up / login button. Next, they go through the relevant screens to either up sign up or login to the app.

Next came the prototype.

Prototype

The settings screen and sign-up / login process are then transferred to a working prototype.

Testing

When users went to sign up, they all went to settings first. They all tapped on the sign-up / login button and started the process. The average time it took users to complete the task was 15.3 seconds.

In a post-testing interview, one user (the one who took the longest) mentioned that it took a little longer to sign up for the service. It was at this moment that I got an idea: move sign-up to onboarding.

It was more intuitive. Having onboarding be the first instance of the sign-up / login process made sense. It also made sense from a KPI angle because of user acquisition. Not only are they using the app, but they're going a step further.

Testing (Again)

After making changes, I decided to run the same 3 tasks with the same 3 users. This time I was interested in measuring the amount of time it took for users to complete the sign-up process within the onboarding flow. The average time it took users to complete the sign-up process was 8 seconds.

A decrease in task on time by 47.7%.

15.3

Seconds

Iterating

From the feedback received, I decided to move the sign-up / login process to the onboarding flow. I included a skip button so users have a choice. I then built out onboarding screens to reflect the entire process one would go through to use the service.

I also went back to competitors and saw that none of the apps I looked at include sign-up / login in onboarding. Only settings like I saw earlier. If they were measuring user acquisition it would be low.