When UX, stress and the holistic field mixed up -UX Research
A project about improving the user’s experience who suffer stress using alternative therapies.
We all know that we live in a frenetic world, with a fast pace of life. We have a thousand things to do, thousand responsibilities that sometimes we don’t know where to start, but this is how things actually are, and we just have to learn how to deal with one of the most important things nowadays: Stress.
I can say that almost all of us have experienced it with our skin. We hear around us saying “What a stressful day” or “What a stressful week”, and it is something we have to live with, but do we know how to control ourselves? Do we know how to manage stress? Are we capable of controlling it? Or even much deeper, why do we suffer it?.
That is why at this time, I had the opportunity to carry out a project focused on improving the experience of people who suffer stress through alternative therapies, applying Design Thinking methodology. But how could I do it? or why alternative therapies? And that’s what I’ll explain next.
So, how did I start?
Empathize
As part of any project, research is essential, so I started documenting myself. I started with the Research Questions and then with a previous investigation of what it was going to be about. I found a lot of information about the stress that I didn’t know before, and a curious thing was that every article or document I read -holistic or not-, agreed that stress was best managed with something specific: Relaxation.
“Relaxing is the best solution to face the day to day, where the rush, fear and stress are the protagonists. Only in this way can our body and mind work in total harmony and then feel totally rejuvenated, full of energy and vitality ”
Then, I followed the process, reading and investigating more articles and in this time I realized the health benefits of alternative therapies, and even more so to achieve deep relaxation. I started to search for different digital tools, mobile apps, or web sites that help to get relaxed using these holistic methods.
With the Benchmark and also the Netnography done, I could understand the situation and find new opportunities. I checked some mobile apps that helped relaxation, as well as other techniques for stress management and I discovered most of them (or even all) used meditation and also yoga to manage the stress, but what happened with the other alternative therapies? (because there are a lot!), why the use only meditation? So I continue investigating.
Desk Research
One of the fundamental things is to analyze and know the investigations that other people have done in the past related to our project, because they have tried to answer similar questions to the ones we want to ask, and know-how they have solved. This helped me to understand deeply why people get stressed, which are the factors, the reactions when we are in a problematic situation, and also it helped me to be more prepared when conducting the surveys and interviews.
Expert Interview
Since the project is focused on bringing stress to the field of alternative therapies, I had the opportunity to interview Carla Hernando, a Reiki teacher at AMTH Barcelona center, and who carries about the body part (Body awareness, Alexander technique, stretching, creativity).
As these therapies are not for everyone or all tastes, Carla explained that
she and her center try to carry out different types of activities, bringing the spiritual ones to a lower level so that they can offer them to everyone. She also affirmed all the alternative therapies can help for stress management because they help you to harmonize the energy in the body and reach serenity.
“Every person is a world. There are many who deny that they have stress but the energy speaks before you. You can see the incredible stress they have”
Hernando also explained that Tapping is a good therapy that gives incredible results for stress and also for any physical pain and emotional distress. Even though it is not a well-known technique, it should be of interest because it gives amazing results.
Surveys
This is one of the biggest challenges within UX Research: Get to know users, capture stories, get pain points. Therefore to give them a product that they need, we must understand their necessity.
I wanted to investigate how people deal with stressful situations, as well as to know their most frequent reactions. The most relevant results were:
- 96,4% have suffered stress, it is something that I could imagine but it is also somewhat alarming.
- Users find that it is difficult to face stressful situations. Only 24,5% can do it easily.
- Only 12.4% can keep calm and relax, and that’s one of the biggest problems because relaxation is crucial for stress management.
- They affirmed they would like to be able to relax and have a healthy lifestyle.
- 48.7% affirmed that they would like to have a technological tool to help them deal with stress.
- Even if I didn’t ask about music, most of them affirmed they love to listen to music to reduce stress.
- Users never express how they feel, a thing that worsens any state.
With all this information I could get really important findings. I could see the problem: Users don’t know how to relax and they don’t express themselves.
“Suppressing emotions would only lengthen the physiological effects affecting health.”
User interviews
I conducted in-depth interviews with 4 users. If stress is a factor that affects the vast majority of the population, I wanted to find out how true that was, so the selection of users to interview was quite open.
The main requirement I needed my interviews to have was: to know something about holistic or spiritual therapies because they would be my target. I could collect very valuable information that I had not obtained from the surveys:
- All of them have a different reaction to stress. Some users act in a hostile or aggressive way, others not so much, but they do not express themselves.
- They try to get relaxed when they’re dealing with stress, but they don’t know exactly what to do.
- They forget to practice relaxation therapies.
- They love to reduce stress by listening to music.
- The most important factor: They don’t have time. People are always busy and don’t have time to practice longs therapies.
With everything learned previously, I could obtain four main factors that guided me towards a solution: Users need to relax, they don’t have time and neither express themselves (the two biggest problems for stress management) and also they all love listening to music to reduce stress. These were the findings that helped me run the project.
Archetypes
Now, what do we do with all the valuable information obtained? How do we synthesize it? It was time to humanize the project to represent the type of user (or types) that will guide me to create a solution adapted to them. But before that, I established the archetypes of the different user types, which directly or indirectly influence my project, since the stress is so extensive, it seemed to me that it would help me much more to understand them (and emphasize).
“Archetypes help create a better product in all its aspects: functionality, visual design, navigation and content because they help the whole team to focus on the user”
Personas
After having the archetypes established, I started one of the phases that I like the most: Create Personas. I think it’s like giving life to all the information I had collected. It is like giving a human face to all the processes that had taken until now. There were two personas that I would focus on and carry out my project, which according to their archetypes was an Innocent and a Caregiver.
These two personas have an affinity for holistic aspects and get easily stressed, as well as the habit of overthinking and difficult to get relaxed. In this way, I could know how their personalities were affected by stress and have a more complete view of the users I wanted to work, conducting my project based on your needs, frustrations, and goals.
User Journey
In this way I was able to detect pain points and frustrations, having the opportunity to offer improvements.
My first persona, Andrea, went to work and encountered stressful moments during her day -because she works in a place that she hates- which she could not control and ended up reacting badly with those around her and even with her loved ones, feeling frustrated for not knowing how to relax. As we can see, her day is full of pain points that could be better if she could have a tool for stress management and also remembering her to do the therapies.
Similar to Marta, a Saturday morning, she woke up and started her day with a big headache but happy because she would have time to practice the therapies anti-stress. The problem started when her boss called her to work and the stress level increased.
Define
In this phase, the moment arrived, and it was time to make the Point of view (POV) not to lose sight of the needs of our users. I also included two other archetypes to consider in the proposal.
After that, I could get the insights: Everything that I’ve learned and all the information that I got, was very useful to give the project a sense.
The most important insights were the three above. Basically, users don’t know how to deal with a stressful situation, they don’t have enough time to practice long therapies, and neither they don’t remember to do it when they are in a problematic situation. It is for that reason, it is important to offer them a way to reduce stress and control it in an effective way and in a little time.
With the insights done and also the four main factors obtained, I could make the HMW, and from there, all the ideas began to emerge. I found out that Tapping therapy was a good method to relieve stress, and could help users to resolve their principal problems to reach relaxation, doing it in just a few minutes, and also helping them to free out their feelings.
With the fact about music, I found out that there was an alternative therapy that was related to it: Sound Healing, which is a practice that uses vibrations, like gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, and tuning forks, to relax your mind and body, helping to relieve stress. After, I used these two therapies to conduct the solution.
Ideation
At this phase, it was time to come up with many ideas. I did many of the ideation techniques that helped me come up with many concepts. As there were a lot of ideas, and it was not an easy task to decide, I made the Matrix C-Box to generate an overview from it and to prioritize the best ones.
Value Proposition
All the ideas that I could get and the insights, allowed me to define the solution. Based on the 4 previous factors, I reached the following value proposition:
Finally, with the MoSCoW, I could define and prioritize the most innovative solution to this project and the things that must, should, could have and won’t have.
Then, I made a Business Model Canvas that let me define the services we will offer and the user segment, allowing the idea to be clearly presented to work.
Storyboard
Once the value proposition was ready, it was time to visually show what the solution would be and its benefits. In the storyboard, I showed the story of Andrea, who lived through an adverse situation, then became stressed, and reacted badly. After using the Serene App that her friend recommended, she could sleep better, manage well her day and when she went through another stressful situation, the smartwatch detected the alteration of the heart rhythm, suggesting her to relax doing tapping therapy, which she did and felt much better.
Research is a fundamental part of any project. Here I could expose all the processes that I carry out to do it, and which allowed to lay the solid foundations of what would be the final proposal. To have an effective design, there must be strong and accurate research behind it.
In the next post, I will continue to explain the ideation phase, the UX Design process, the UI applications, and how this project ended.
