Brooks | High level provocation
Role
Product Design
Overview
I collaborated with Brooks Running as a product designer, demonstrating my user-centered design skills and gathering insights through research. By analyzing data, I identified opportunities and crafted an improved user interface. This opportunity showcased my skills and potential impact on their digital presence.
Problem
The request was a product to improve the running experience for all ages, the challenge was open-ended, allowing for endless possibilities and unrestricted creativity to find the best solution. With no limitations, this was a chance to explore innovative ideas that could have a lasting impact on the running world.
Solution
RunWell
In an unpredictable world, runners are seeking more control over the way they feel. Runners are frustrated that they aren’t able to effectively gauge the impact of the run on their mental health and equally mental health on their running performance. RunWell is a conceptual app that tracks a user’s mental health and run performance metrics to provide a comprehensive understanding of how each affects the other. The app also intends to feature curated content to users in support of their mental health and overall wellness.
Tracking Runs and Mental Health
This design's main functionality is to track a user's runs and gauge their mental health post-run. It not only records runs, whether through this app or a corresponding 3rd party running app, but also goes beyond by asking the user a series of questions. These questions aim to shed light on different areas that contribute to their overall mental well-being. By collecting this additional information, RunWell aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the user's mental health, ultimately guiding them towards improved overall well-being.
Visualizing Insights
This feature hopes to change the way users analyze their post-run experiences by providing them with comprehensive trending data. Through the collection of feedback metrics such as mood, difficulty, and social aptitude, users can gain valuable insights into the impact of their runs on their mental well-being. By continuously gathering and analyzing this data over time, customers will be empowered to make informed decisions about their running routine to optimize their overall mental health and well-being.
The work
Discovery
Understanding
Starting my research on how I can design tools that can help runners understand the impact running has on their mental health began with understanding if this has any value to runners. I needed to explore whether runners care about how their mental health affects their running performance.
In a study conducted by the University of Hawaii on the relation between depression and running, they identified in their research that many participants found running to have a positive effect on their mental health.
Defining Mental Health
It was clear there has been research done on the relation between mental health and running. What was not clear to my own understanding was how people define mental health. In order to begin ideating for tools that can improve people’s mental health I had to dive deeper into what mental health means specifically.
User Stories
When I began writing out user stories it was important to think about factors like the device being used and the environment that this app would be used in. Quick simple illustrations in place of storyboards helped visually set the theme of some of these user stories.
As a user I want to track my daily mental state so that I can reflect on my overall mental health.
As a user I want to be able to track my runs and progress daily so that I can see my performance overtime.
As a user I want to see how my mental health is affecting my running performance.
As a user I want to engage in content that is supportive to my mental health.
Conducting Preliminary Research
I educated myself about mental health to prepare for interviewing real users. This design exercise was fast and lasted only a week. I had 3 days to recruit and interview participants, which was difficult. I managed to recruit over 25 participants with varying levels of running skills. Conducting these interviews in a short amount of time was challenging, so I used a semi-moderated interview/online survey approach. Despite interviewing 28 people, I had to carefully craft questions to get the right insights and avoid bias, considering the small sample size and its potential impact on the results.
Personas
From our interviews with real runners, I wanted to make sure this app was creating tools for all levels of runners. To help establish this understanding quick user personas were crafted.
Design
Card sorting
Kicking off the design process I wanted to start brainstorming for solutions based on the research that I had conducted. This card-sorting exercise helped organize and lead to early design solutions.
Sketching
Designing on a crunched timeline is never ideal but I find that getting down quick wireframes help in starting to imagine layouts, flows, and navigation structure
Prototyping
The final design for this exercise was a low to mid fidelity prototype. The minimum was to create a clickable wireframe prototype however I wanted to convey a visual aesthetic to help set the tone of the app given its focus on mental health. Cool calming colors contributed to this look. The solutions that were ideated upon played a big emphasis on tracking run workouts and post run mental health metrics. These metrics needed to be visually engaging and viewable for the user to understand their progress.