curaJOY: Creating workflows for tracking and visualizing progress
Overview
curaJOY is a social-emotional wellness platform that promotes positive behaviors in families with AI and clinical supervision.
Approaching launch, my partner and I contributed to the Quests module which focuses on goal-oriented activities for personal development. I helped define how users customize, measure, and record their activity progress.
Role
UI Designer
UX Researcher
Duration
2024, 9 weeks
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
Unclear criteria and ambiguous progress indicators make it hard to interpret activity performance.
While the existing iteration logs activity streaks, there are missing steps in the quest creation process and unintuitive insights that don't effectively communicate how the activities are tracked and measured. Consequently, users may feel confused when monitoring their progress or lose interest in their quest.
The updated workflows are optimized for communicating details that matter.
Personalized goal-setting guidance and incentives prime users for success.
Individual activity progress indicators encourage consistent engagement and growth.
Desktop: Create New Quest
Mobile: Create New Quest
Desktop: Single Quest
Mobile: Single Quest
To kick off the process, we held a meeting with our client to call out main goals and requirements.
Quests was designed to help users pursue long-term success by engaging in regular activities and collaborative efforts. Our client asked us to augment its capabilities for maximal engagement with the product and other users.
As we assessed product feature information, we recognized our focuses were to create a distinction between activities and quests and devise methods for activity definition and check-in.
We began our research by looking at broad attitudes on habits and check-ins.
Sourcing desk research, we were particularly interested in what prevents people from reaching their new year's resolution goals. We found that people felt ambitious about their desires and strategies. Despite this, majority failed to stick to their goals due to mismanaged progress, limited time, or changed priorities.
We noted to infuse achievable, focused steps and follow ups to make users feel like they benefit every time they revisit their activities.
With a better grasp on people's struggles, we examined lifestyle tracking apps to help ground our designs.
Applications such as Streaks and Habio center around successfully building new skills, but they don't elevate the intrinsic gratification in participating in growth routines. We also referenced gamified features to see how we can translate progress into streaks in a fun, digestible way.
We opted to visualize the progress of each activity and cultivate Quest's group-oriented experience where participants actively support the quester in their journey.
Streaks: Creating and adding activities
Habio: Setting repetition
Duolingo: Tracking and visualizing progress
The Office: Somehow We Manage: Gamified Streaks
Following a review session with the design team, we mapped out users' critical needs.
To make a powerful and compelling module for questers, allies, and benefactors, we considered all their POVs. Understanding their motivations at points of interaction revealed a fundamental need for clear goal breakdowns, progress over perfection, cooperation, and tangible rewards.
Backed by research and users, I integrated inspirational plans and thoughtful insights to existing surfaces in Quests.
I experimented with breaking down the quest creation process into smaller, manageable steps. I noticed that the steps to invite allies and benefactors blurred the distinction between the roles. In the end, we involved only questers and benefactors based on our client's priority for the release.
Nearly identical interface and copy
To tackle an edge case where questers prefer to pursue quests without assistance, I designed a quest creation confirmation dialog that capitalizes the flexibility to select benefactors and treasures. I refined the dialog content and button copy, bringing clarity to enable confident navigation decisions.
Along with the dialog, I had informed the optional steps with visual indicators near the progress bar and skip buttons. I came to realize that the skip button alone was sufficient information, giving a clear and simple look.
V1: Doesn't highlight unfinished steps
V2: Appropriate actions are unintuitive
V3: Emphasizes completion
A crucial step in the form is managing activities. I explored 12 different layouts in which users add, delete, and edit activity details on one screen and narrowed down to 2 final designs. While the 1st design explicitly shows the activity count, I moved forward with the 2nd design to reduce visual clutter and concentrate interactivity on the activity cards.
Add activity button outside of activity cards
Add activity button inside activity cards
By offering extensive customization, I aimed to optimize the activities to best fit users' schedules and generate reliable data. Shifting to broader settings based on frequency or accuracy resolved implementation challenges and a potential decrease in motivation to adhere to strictly scheduled days.
Advanced options could make activity tracking overwhelming
Flexible options make activities seem more approachable
To aid perception of user progress towards milestones, I wanted to show detailed but easily digestible information. On the activity card, I considered various components that afford quick visualization of completion trends. I also built on top of the existing calendar to reveal overall performance insights, promoting motivation and commitment.
In our meetings, we concluded that documenting progress multiple times would yield more precise patterns. Eventually becoming a part of the Activities module, I aligned the visual hierarchy of check-in and journal entry features with the current design system.
Check-in
Journal entry
We brought together new pages from the quester's and benefactor's POV and expanded activity tracking capabilities.
We shipped a revamped quest creation form, introduced a data-driven quester's view of the single quest page, and implemented both quester's and benefactor's view of the treasures section. Due to limited access to our target users, we relied on team feedback when validating our designs.
Being lost is a part of growth.
Going into the project, our client and teams were indecisive about the quest requirements. Fluid priorities and overlapping deliverables challenged me to rapidly adapt and frequently flesh out up-to-date designs.
With more time, I'd like to explore modes of connection and motivation to transform a daunting task into an enjoyable, rewarding experience. I'm curious to see how Quests will continue to depict long-term patterns in mood and behavior.