connect with me
Ask me questions
Get to know me
A healthy lifestyle app like no other, Sauna’s goal is to lay the foundation for a healthy, mindful and reflective life. The app utilizes three techniques which aim to help users reflect upon past experiences, keep track of thoughts and finally plan for the future.
In todays climate, it has become increasingly easy to push aside our goals, our health, or what’s truly important to us. Sauna aims to build an experience which helps people be more conscious about their health and to promote healthy living. The way Sauna tackles healthy living is through helping the user develop a mindset, meant to refine their priorities and join them in accomplishing the tasks which really matter to them.
In order to live a healthy lifestyle, it's imperative that the your mind and body are in agreement. For this reason, being mindful by directing attention to a specific point in time helps us evaluate our options and make the decision which most benefits our health.
Sauna is meant to be a safe haven from the distractions of everyday life. Since most of our phone time is spent on social media apps it’s hard to avoid notifications and constant updates. Sauna is designed to create a relaxing experience for the user.
Often when someone is feeling “stuck in a rut” they lack the motivation to act on their goals. These goals often seem impossible because we think of the end goal too soon. Sauna addresses the issue by breaking down goals into smaller and more conceivable steps.
Once the user flow and preliminary sketches were complete, I began creating simple wireframes on Sketch. The main focus was to develop interfaces which would be intuitive to the general user. In this process I designed multiple iterations in order to find effective methods of communicating the necessary information.
Landing Pages
The initial loading screen is meant for the user to enter a relaxed state of mind. It features a timed animation which follows the speed of a deep breath and the app requests for the user to “Breathe”. The main menu is simple and straight forward, it consists of the users Core(past experiences), Thoughts (present) and Plans (future).
Scenario One: Daily Diary
Daily diary is the feature which will be most commonly used on the app. From the main menu the user is taken to a screen displaying past journal entries. The journal entries can be displayed as a list or as a calendar. A key aspect is the connection of colour to the journal entry ,allowing the user to express their mood through color creates a more holistic memory.
Scenario Two: Building the Core
The core is meant to be a self reflection on your past experiences and what makes you tick. The main page is similar to that of the daily journal except it provides larger spaces to preview the text since theoretically there will be a smaller number of entries. The actual entries include room for the name of the value and the users explanation of it. These values serve as a filter in the goal setting process.
Scenario Three: Setting Goals
Plans is the users method to set goals which wont be lost in the wind. The initial page contains the users set goals with a progress bar showing how far along they are. New goals can be added using the plus symbol on the top (middle) or chosen from the discovery section (top right). The user is then led through a series of questions meant to refine and define the goal they are setting out to achieve.
Once the user has input their responses the next question becomes available via the arrow in the top right. At any point the user can click the back arrow to adjust their previous answers.The questions include the ability to answer with multiple items by tapping the plus button. Some questions such as the difficulty include visual representations to create a simpler interaction for the user.
Following the user on the bottom of the screen is their progress throughout the goal making process. After breaking down the goal into smaller tasks they can be scheduled for a specific day. These scheduled events then become reminders for the user in the form of notifications. The notifications combine the users scheduling with their previous answers to the “Why?” question in order to motivate the user.
The first step I would like to take in order to continue this project would be to conduct basic user testing. The testing would allow me to refine everything, from user flow to specific screen hotspots. There are also several features which I would like to explore such as pinning diary entries and adding a musical aspect.
Although my initial research was not extensive due to the time restriction, I was still able to learn a lot about mental health, which inspired this project. While working on the wireframes and prototypes I also refined a convenient workflow for creating an interface using Sketch, Sketch Cloud and Invision.
