Breathe Fit Mobile App

App which helps users practice breathing techniques regularly to improve their physical and mental health.

Business Problem

Facilitating a way for people to improve their physical health and mental health by practicing breathing techniques in their day to day life.

User Research

The main goals of the user research have been to understand

How common is it among people to practice breathing techniques?
The current ways/platforms of practicing breathing techniques.
The main problem that the user is trying to address by practicing breathing techniques.
What features an app should offer to help the user in achieving their goals.

Personal Interviews

I interviewed 7 people and received some interesting insights to start with.

Out of 7 people, 4 of them tried out breathing techniques at some point of time, while 2 of them practice breathing on regular basis.
3 people started practicing the techniques to deal with anxiety and stress, 1 person started breathing techniques to improve his sports performance, 1 person wanted to learn techniques based on breath book by James Nestor and 1 person practiced for a while based on medical recommendation.
Among the 2 people who practice breathing techniques regularly, 1 person use mobile applications while 1 person uses timed music.
Forming a consistent habit is the major issue highlighted by majority of them.

App Reviews from Play Store

For better understanding of the users using app regularly, features appreciated and paint points of the user, I have gone through the Play Store reviews for 4 of the popular breathing applications.

Users commonly are using the existing apps to deal with anxiety, stress, breath capacity and for sleeping issues.
Lots of users appreciated features like custom timers/exercises, custom background scores, option to choose among narration voice, custom notifications, features around tracking progress.
Lots of user frustrations are around untimely notifications, narration and app not running in background.

Conclusions

Ideation

Problem Statement

Help users practice breathing techniques regularly to improve their physical and mental health.

The problem statement is converted into How Might We (HMW) statements to prepare for ideation:

HMW help users practice breathing techniques to improve their physical and mental health.
HMW help users in building habits around breathing.

Features

Based on the user priorities (observed during user research), product goals and ease of implementation, features are sorted using MoSCoW method. Must haves and should haves are being considered for design of the initial version of the product.

User Journeys

Users starts navigating through the app trying to address their need and arriving at them quicker will impact the user experience. I started thinking from perspectives of different users and their needs to prioritize/organize content and features in to different screens.

Types of User Needs:

Known-item seeking: Users will come to the website to search for something desirable and known.
- Users coming to app with a specific goal to improve specific health aspect by practicing breathing technique (they can be looking for a very specific technique as well). Finding out the relevant techniques and practicing them could be primary goal. All the features which add value to this primary goal (Ex., background music, narration) can also be major value add to users.
- Users coming to app with clear idea of what to practice and what insights to track ( Ex. Users in sports domain , Users motivated by breathing techniques in books). Setting up reminders, tracking progress and setting up goals could be primary goal for them.
Exploratory seeking: Users will come to the website looking for inspiration. They’re looking for something desirable but not sure what exactly.
- Users with vague idea of benefits of techniques but not really sure what to start with and where to start with. Recommendations of techniques, summary and benefits of techniques could bring users closer to finding their needs.
- Users with a specific goal to improve something but looking for ways to stay motivated (not really sure of ways). While practising techniques is important, introducing them to reminders, progress tracking and social groups could be a major value add for these users.
Exhaustive research: Users are in a process of an extensive research. They want to find as much information as possible.
- Users who are in process of exploring benefits of the techniques and also seeking more information. Though the primary business goal is not very aligned with users goal in this case, summaries of exercises and Learn section can help achieve the user goals.
Re-finding: A user needs a desired items again and are trying to find it.
- Common behavior among the users using the application regularly. User might want to re-find regularly practiced exercises, track goals and insights, Reminders, exercises saved offline, specific learn shorts which they saved & social groups they are part of.

These insights will be used in understanding the user journey/Task flow and arriving at Information architecture.

Information Architecture

Design

Wireframes

Visual Designs

Home and Profile Screens

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Intend of this step is to get better understanding of the primary goals of the user and showing the relevant exercises. This helps in taking users to their goals quicker. For users coming with broader goals rather than specific goals, selection of the larger subset is more convenient.

Home screen of the new user has recommendations,custom exercises and all exercises sections. Recommendations are based on what the user want to improve. Overview of the exercise and benefits help user to understand the exercise. Minimum number of cycles and time helps busy users to know the time requirement. Custom exercise being one of the features which lots of users emphasized on app store, it is prioritised on home screen next to recommendations. All exercises section with quick broad level filters is the last section, made available to address users coming with exploratory mindset.

In case of returning users, primary focus is on helping users with motivations and also providing easy access to exercises they regularly practise. So, home screen of the returning users has additional sections – progress overview, weekly goals, upcoming sessions and favorite exercises. Progress overview showing the broad indicators like streak and day practise time. This motivates the user to practise everyday to keep up the streak and also improve their daily practise times. Weekly goals section helps users with very specific exercise goals to keep a track of their weekly time/cycles spent practicing. Upcoming sessions shows the 2 sessions coming up based on the reminders set by the user. This helps user with accessing the sessions scheduled quickly. Favorite exercises section provides easy access to exercises regularly practised by the user.

Search option to arrive at exercise the user is looking for quickly.

Option in all exercises section to filter exercises based on the benefits and mode of practise. Helps user to explore exercises better based on benefits and mode.

Users can save their own custom pattern of breathing - Inhale, hold and exhale as a new exercise.

Users can change their preferences like music, vibration and narration during exercise through exercise settings. All the reminders set by user can be accessed from reminders section. Option to switch to dark theme easily. All the mini reads saved by user are accessible under saved mini reads. All the exercises which user saved for offline user are accessible under Offline exercises.

Exercise Screens

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Recommended exercises cards show the brief details of the exercise to help users decide quickly on which exercise to practice. Health benefits of the exercise being the important information for user to decide which exercise to practise, they are visually highlighted. Exercise screen show more detailed information on how to practise the exercise. Since consuming raw text instructions is hard for user, information is visually presented to user in a way it's easy to consume. However returning users will not be keen on these instructions, so arrived at visual design of screen which highlights the key infromation and attention from instructions is subtly controlled. Once the user clicks on breathe, exercise screen loads with play option. Visually refreshing and calm illustrations by jcomp - www.freepik.com are used. User can pause the exercise, option made available based on the app reviews. Subtle visual instructions made available incase of users who are looking at screen for visual instructions rather than following audio instructions. Users who decide to practice the exercise for more time can quickly change the time/cycles on the setting.

It is ensured visually that decisions to be taken by user on this screen are kept to minimal. However, there are options like background score, narration and vibration which are highlighted by users on the competitors app store reviews are made available for users under exercise settings. Test cases can be created around how frequently user is changing these preferences to decide on if these settings are important for users on this screen or not. Upon closing or completing any exercise, exercise summary with an option to create memory is shown to positively motivate users. Considering the immediate next possible actions by user, option to share the achievement, add to favorites and add reminder are provided.

Recommended exercises cards show the brief details of the exercise to help users decide quickly on which exercise to practice. Health benefits of the exercise being the important information for user to decide which exercise to practise, they are visually highlighted. Exercise screen show more detailed information on how to practise the exercise. Since consuming raw text instructions is hard for user, information is visually presented to user in a way it's easy to consume. However returning users will not be keen on these instructions, so arrived at visual design of screen which highlights the key infromation and attention from instructions is subtly controlled. Once the user clicks on breathe, exercise screen loads with play option. Visually refreshing and calm illustrations by jcomp - www.freepik.com are used. It is ensured visually that decisions to be taken by user on this screen are kept to minimal. However, there are options like background score, narration and vibration which are highlighted by users on the competitors app store reviews are made available for users under exercise settings. Test cases can be created around how frequently user is changing these preferences to decide on if these settings are important for users on this screen or not. User can pause the exercise, option made available based on the app reviews. Subtle visual instructions made available incase of users who are looking at screen for visual instructions rather than following audio instructions. Users who decide to practice the exercise for more time can quickly change the time/cycles on the setting.

Upon navigating to reminders from profile screen, users arrive at set reminder screen. User can even set reminders for exercises directly from exercise screen. Option to set recurring reminders is available. Option to just disable the reminder temperorily is also available. Considering the app reviews by users on frequent notifications, enough flexibility for setting custom reminders is provided.

Option to add to favorites,add reminder,share and save offline are available on exercise screen considering the actions possible by user other than practsing the exercise.

Track Progress & Mini Reads Screens

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Track progress has 2 tabs, activity and fitness. In activity tab, statistics around the daily activity of users and their goals is represented to motivate users. In fitness tab, statistics around overall health and performance progress of the user are represented.

Activity tab shows the data like streak, practise time of the day with comparison to the best values and weekly statistics are shown to motivate users. For users with specific goals to improve particular aspect of health, option to set weekly goals for any exercise is available.

Fitness tab with latest and average values of breath hold test and progress overtime.

Mini reads with interesting facts around breathing.