Exhale Meditation App

​The Project 
Exhale Meditation app is an app focused provided relief and calmness to specifically people of color.

​Project Duration
July 2022 - Ongoing

The Problem
A lot of meditation apps content seems catered to white users. The focus of the Exhale meditation app is for people of color in high stress environments.

The Goal
Build a prototype of a meditation app and see how People of Color react to it and how useful they find it.
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My Role
Lead UX Designer

Responsibilities
Sets the direction of what the software development team will build at the beginning of two-week sprint cycles.
         Leads the software development team on executing “bets” that senior management makes on what can provide business value/delight customers
        Understand product specifications and user psychology.

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Understanding The User

Came into this research with low expectations on what people of color consider meditation to be. I grew a lot in the understanding of how they view meditation and how it can be implemented on a platform.

Personas

Competitive Audit

Headspace and Calm have a strong hold on the  meditation market.
​The focus I have is on People of color; building content and a design that will attract and sustain a user base of people of color. 

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Starting The Design

Paper Wireframes
I created a simple meditation app design. The layout would be minimal to set apart from the other meditation apps.

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Digital Wireframes

Lo-Fi Prototypes

The first layout was pretty simple. And user flow would take the user from login to the meditation options which would then have a paywall preventing them from using the app further until they subscribe. 
Click here to see the prototype

Usability Study

We did an unmoderated  remote user study with 5 participants for 15-20 minutes. 

Findings
Most of the findings was that the app was simple and easy to use but some participants were curious as to how many meditations would be available and also how would pricing be for users in Jamaica. 

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Mockups
I was inspired by the sea shell because of the association to the ocean. Putting a seashell to your is something a lot of children do because it sounds like the ocean. It represents a source of relaxation. The colors represent  sand and water. I kept that theme throughout the entire design for this draft, knowing that it would change overtime.

Hi Fidelity Prototypes

I made the subscription button a lot easier to use as an overlay screen. I kept the colors and design following sand and water as well as a seashell to keep with the design theme established.
Click Here to see the hifi prototype

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Responsive Designs

The design for this was to ensure that a sample of what the app and site had to offer was provided. And then the paywall would take the user to the subscription model.

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Moving Forward

Impact:
The design I’ve done has gotten good reception from users. I need to change the colors of the text to make it more legible. Other than that we will continue upgrading the design and doing some backend coding to make the app ready by the end of September.

What I learned:
I learned that design is always changing and there is always room for improvement. Gonna change the colors , develop a night version for the design, may make less meditations available especially since we're starting out.
Will update this when the app is available here.
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