HumbleWorks

Project Summary

HumbleWorks offers a range of sustainable standing desk and home office products designed to improve productivity through posture and dynamic movement. They created a beta for an app that is meant to work with their standing desk users to help set goals and track mood, movement, and productivity.

Our team of three was tasked with validating their initial research and designing a solution that would bring them closer to the launch of the app.

Client Project

Mobile App

Project Details

Role:

UX/UI Designer

Duration:

2.5 weeks

Tools:

Figma, Maze

Problem

HumbleWorks had been testing their beta mobile app on a small number of their user base and they had discovered some key areas to improve before launch. They wished to improve user comprehension off app features and discover ways to provide actionable feedback to allow users to see the benefit of the app.

A mockup of the home page for the original HumbleWorks beta app.

Solution

A high-fidelity prototype was developed with revised functionality that assists user comprehension of the function and flow of the app and provides actionable feedback on how to set goals in-app and improve day-today.

Beta App Flow

We wanted to break down the current flow of how the app is used in order to help identify areas of improvement for how users understand the beta app and to ensure our final design achieves a similar flow.

Research Insights

Interviews and usability testing were conducted on current HumbleWorks customers to verify user pain points and identify user expectations for how the app might be used alongside the standing desk. Through this research these insights were discovered:

Users enjoyed the to-list feature but wanted more customization options

Users struggled to understand what metric would be used to measure movement and productivity

Users struggled to read the data visualization showing weekly scores

Defining User Problems

We used Daisy as a representative of our users to understand what their goals and frustrations are with the current product. To think of possible solutions we asked ourselves:

How might we give Daisy a way to measure her daily achievements in a way that promotes a sense of accomplishment?
How might we encourage Daisy to stay motivated when she is behind on her workload?
How might we convert Daisy's data in understandle and helpful feedback.

User Flows

To help us plan out how we can help Daisy accomplish her daily goals we built out two user flows for each part of the day. The first flow occurs when she starts her day and wants to set those goals. The second flow begins when she is checking up on her goal progress towards the end of the day. These flows help us understand how to keep the process simple and identify any points that may cause confusion.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

With the help of Daisy and our research insights, we put together grayscale wireframes into a testable prototype in order to evaluate the effectiveness of our new designs centered around improving user understanding and providing effective feedback. We also included early versions of our copy to understand what users expect the tone of the app to be.

01. Mood Expectations

Users did not feel comfortable setting a mood goal for the day, saying things like "Of course I want to feel good today."
So instead we wanted to help users monitor and track their current mood, without the pressure of trying to improve it during the day.

02. To-do List Customization

We added more options when creating tasks, allowing users to define time-frames for the tasks and the ability to receive reminder alerts.

03. Setting Movement Goals

We wanted to test if giving users preset movement goals instead of setting a movement percentage for the day would be easier to understand and track. Also giving users the ability to be reminded to move throughout the day.

04. Review Progress

We simplified the data visualization on the progress page by separating into sections with simple progress bars. Users also noted during beta testing that they felt uncomfortable trying to achieve a mood goal for the day. We chose to instead show users how they felt for the day, believing that it would remove some of that pressure.

Usability Testing 2nd Round

Once we felt confident in our design solutions we reached out to a new group of HumbleWorks customers to test this new prototype on and get feedback on what could be improved.

Results

Testing proved to be mostly successful with a few pain points along the way. All users tested were able to finish the flow. However, users were frustrated at the size of the mood cards on the home page and all but one user made an error by immediately being drawn to and pressing the "Update Mood" button.

Users loved the new to-do list and all the options for customization. However, they struggled to understand the goal of the "Move" page, thinking it wanted them to get up and do some physical activity. They noted that they did not see how it related to them using their standing desk.

Finally, users found that the new data visualization was intuitive and easy to understand. They noted that they would like to see more details broken down in the weekly and monthly views.

High Fidelity Prototype

Taking the feedback from the previous round of testing we developed a high-fidelity prototype with important changes. We moved the mood cards to their own Mood page to allow users to see all moods at once and to make the flow of the app more intuitive, which we further tried to do by listing out the steps to use the app on the Home page.

The move page was redesigned to help users understand the goal is to create a dynamic work environment where they are switching between different seated and standing positions throughout the day.

Finally, we added a more detailed view to the weekly progress page by changing the progress bars to bar graphs with the option to select an individual bar and view it's data.

Next Steps & Reflection

After creating this prototype we believe these next steps for the product should be taken:

Build a thorough onboarding process to help users understanding the purpose and science behind the app and it's metrics

Begin research on an employer view for the app to determine how employers could effectively and ethically monitor app data

Engage scientific experts on the benefits of a dynamic work environment so that accurate feedback can be given to users

My team thoroughly enjoyed our experience collaborating with HumbleWorks and getting to work on a product that promotes mental well-being and work-life balance.

We concluded the project by handing off deliverables and presenting our findings. HumbleWorks was super excited with the results and noted that they would love to work together again.