RemindMe

BACKGROUND

This project originated from my personal experience working from home during the summer. Every day, I spent around 8 hours sitting at my dinner table and staring at my computer screen. It was so easy to lose the track of time, and I was experiencing back pain, shoulder stiffness, (slight) fat gain around the waist -- all from prolonged sitting! 😰

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How can I remain physically active? This question was on my mind and I decided to dig deeper into the question in hopes to find a solution myself -- this is where RemindMe comes from. RemindMe is a reminder app that pushes personalized reminders periodically to help users maintain physically active, stay productive, and form healthy lifestyles while working/studying from home. 🥳

TIMELINE

~ 3 weeks, summer 2020 (design)

~ 6 weeks, spring 2021 (Protoype/MVP)

ROLE

Product design, content strategy, user research, team lead, iOS development

PROJECT TYPE

Individual + group passion project

TEAM

2 front-end & 2 back-end developers

FINAL PRODUCT SNEAK PEEK 👀

Onboarding Flow

Reminders Flow

Friend Invitation Flow

OVERVIEW

Where did the idea come from?

With Work From Home (WFH) being the new normal, the world is experiencing another pandemic – physical inactivity (PI) and sedentary behavior (SB). During the summer, I did my internship remotely, and I felt increasingly unhealthy and unproductive due to prolonged sitting, social isolation, and work-life imbalance.

What's the problem?

People are experiencing unhealthy lifestyles given the WFH situation.

"Without the social interactions and regular work environment, it is harder for me to maintain physically active and stay disciplined. I gained weight and became a couch potato since I barely go out. I stopped exercising and sit in front of my laptop all day."

- Jane, 24, software engineer working from home

RESEARCH

Do others have similar problems?  User Interviews

I interviewed 13 participants who are ...

Target users!

I hoped to ...

• Understand how working from home is affecting people. If so, what positive 😃effects and what negative 😣ones?

• Learn about current technologies that support people during workdays & their pros and cons. 

• Identify user needs and expectations for maintaining their wellbeing during WFH.

From the results & data, I knew that ...

92%

During WFH,               of participants felt unhealthy and/or unproductive at some point.

                had difficulties with time management and/or maintaining work-life balance.

75%

Most experienced a decrease in physical activity or excising during quarantine.

I learned that ...

• It is important to bring in the human aspect for technologies and have them personalized.

• The lack of social interactions is also a huge factor that is affecting people's wellbeing.

• Users prefer technologies that have simple user interfaces and user flows.

What about the general population?  Quantitative Research

Read my full research report here!

I led standing research studies with ...

I hoped to ...

• Understand the work environment for MTurkers working from home.

• Learn about activities people engage with during work breaks & their preferences. 

• Research on motivations for people to stand up during work.

From the results & data, I learned that ...

• Most people take breaks once an hour during work.

• Their intentions for taking breaks are usually centered around physical needs (e.g. bathroom, water).

• Only ~10% of participants are attentive to the health benefits of taking work breaks.

What are the problems & what can I do to help?  HMWs

01

Jane, a software engineer working from home, needs a way to remind herself to take breaks and exercise during work because she is experiencing back pain and gaining weight, and she wants to have the experience personalized.

02

Bob, a college student taking summer classes remotely, needs to connect with his friends from college because she is feeling lonely during social distancing, but he wants to make the time more meaningful and doesn't distract him too much from work.

What are some existing solutions?  Benchmarking

After understanding the users' needs and expectations, I looked for existing solutions that assist users when working from home, hoping to find what they are doing well and what not. Here are some main categories: work apps, reminder/to-do list apps, wellbeing apps, and exercise apps.

My takeaways

• Existing technologies are hard to personalize and requires much work from users to set up.

• There are very few interactions between users within the existing technologies.

• There are hardly any apps that focus on promoting wellbeing during worktime.

IDEATION

Brainstorming 🧠  Lightning Jam

During the initial brainstorming phase, I brainstormed with the team about potential solutions to the 2 HMW statements through brainwriting and rapid ideation. Then, we used affinity mapping to summarize ideas and took a bottom-up approach to find the optimal one.

My solution 💡

With all my takeaways from the research process, I came up with the idea of RemindMe that targets the problems users face during WFH while integrating their expectations & needs.

Information Architecture

⌚️

Smart Watch

• Notifications

Receiving and accepting incoming reminders

• Progress & profile

Displays daily progress and basic profile information

💻

• Notifications

Receiving and accepting incoming reminders

Desktop

Lo-fi Wireframes & User flow  Hover to see more!

DESIGN & ITERATIONS

Design System

I chose to use mainly pastel colors in order to give a "calming" feeling for users during their busy workdays. The color palette is generated based on the pastel dark blue as the primary color. The typography is based on Proxima Nova and Roboto to give a modern and clean vibe. 

Final Mockups

First-time login set up

Added default

reminder setting -- 2 in 1 onboarding

All reminders

Added filtering

option

Added the all reminders page in addition to the dashboard

Reminder profile

Restyled frequency settings

Introduced personalizations to reminder activation

My reminders

Redesigned the active reminders -- simplified screen display & matched up with iOS design system

Progress

Redesigned the graphics

Added filter by time frame option here to simplify the viewing experience

PROTOTYPE

User Flows

Onboarding Flow

• Login: Login to the app with your RemindMe account, Google, or Facebook

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• Sign up: Sign up to create a new account

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• Set up: Set up your account with your basic information (e.g. age, height, activity level) for personalized smart reminders and modify reminder settings

Reminders Flow

• All reminders: View all reminders, filter by categories, and add them to your reminders

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• Daily activity logs: Check-in to see your daily progress

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• My reminders: Activate reminders, edit reminder settings, and receive notifications for the reminders

Friend Invitation Flow

• Best friends: Interact with your friends by sending them invites and/or completing their invites to have them as best friends

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• Weekly leaderboard: Who accepted the most reminders and worked the hardest? Check the leaderboard

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• Invite your friend: Invite friends to complete a reminder with you -- or just simply remind them to take a work break

Full app walk through

• Onboarding: 0:00 - 1:45

Welcome page, login & sign up, basic info set up & reminders settings, success page

• Dashboard: 1:45 - 2:48

Popular reminders, favorite reminders, daily progress trackings, menu bar

• Reminder: 2:48 - 4:07

All reminders, filtering, single reminder page, activate reminder, my reminders, notification on/off

• Progress: 4:07 - 5:21

Progress tracking based on day/week/month/year, interactive graphics, average comparison

• Friend invitation: 5:21 - 7:23

Friends page, best friends, week leaderboard, friend profile & info, invite friend (send reminder)

• User profile: 7:23 - end

User profile & info, basic info setting, general settings, add friends, do not disturb mode

iOS MVP Demo Video

I worked on developing an MVP of RemindMe with a group of friends for the class Mobile Application Development for Entrepreneurs with iOS and the Apple Health Kit. Here's a video of us demoing to the class.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Design feedbacks

"The presentation, thought and design of this project was very impressive and relevant. I would love to use this app!"

- HackDTech Judge

"Very neat design and cute interface! The topic is really interesting and I do agree that the problem exists for working from home."

- Design mentor

Looking Forward & Dreaming Big

• I want to develop RemindMe into an actual app

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Since this project started off as a hackathon project and I've only worked on the design side, I really hope to see if the product can actually be developed one day. Dreaming big, I can see the RemindMe app being super helpful for people, not only during quarantine but also during normal working circumstances.

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• Big data and healthy workspace research

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I am a huge advocate for the idea of bringing big data to people's daily life. During my time researching at Duke Center for Advanced Hindsight, I learned about the downsides of prolonged sitting and how it is affecting the working population, and I would love to see attention raised in the space and help more people maintain a healthier lifestyles.

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• My first design project - check!

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This project is actually my very first case study about product/UX design, and I had a lot of fun going all out on the creative and design side. It was a determining project where I found myself truly enjoying design and decided to pursue design as a career.

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There are still so many ways that this project can improve on (e.g. visual details, guiding flow, more usability testings, and iterations), and I will always continue working on refining it and making it better. Still, I am super proud looking back on all the work and see that I have gone this far following my passion for design and innovation. Checkmark on my first project, many more to come!

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