Case Study: Amigo, Assure healthy work-life balance

Are you trying to become more productive? Young adults are struggling with balancing work time and break time. This overworking habit can lead to serious health problem.

Amigo is here to help

A personalized virtual avatar installed on your computer as an extension that can help you avoid overworking, suggest mindfulness activities to boost focus and use machine learning to understand your feelings and provide the best emotional support.

Senior project final outcome submitted in a motion graphic video format

Project Overview

Senior Project

Amigo is a project undertaken in my senior year at CommDe. As for CommDe senior project, we need to be able to conduct research, formulate idea, execute outcome and present our analysis and final outcome.

My initial topic was “Toxic Productivity”, which came from my own personal struggle as I am obsessed with wanting to be productive all the time.

Role UX/UI Designer

Duration 8 months / 32 weeks / AUG 2021 — APR 2022

Project Timeline

A 32-week project timeline in a design thinking process

1 — EMPATHISE

Secondary Research

My peers started by digging into academic papers and case studies, but for my case, the term “Toxic productivity” is very new. There were not that much beneficial data I can find through secondary research.

I decided to go straight to user interviews to find out if others are having the same productivity problem as I am, and what is their actual pain points.

User Interview

As there’re no official definition of “toxic productivity”, I had to define the criteria of my interviewees, as a first step to scope the target group.

My note I created when preparing for the interview sessions

I screened the interviewees by showing them criteria and asked if they think they match. During the session, I firstly asked them to tell me why they think they match the criteria.

Reflective: However, 3 out of 9 interviewees didn’t actually match the criteria due to miscommunication.

I then asked about…

How overworking behaviour affects their life?

How they deal with negative consequences?

What exactly are they trying to achieve with productivity?

We also discussed cultural and social issue to see if there’re other factors that influence their habit. I also asked interviewees to describe their daily activity. The working-from-home and COVID-19 issues were discussed as well.

I summarised the data from user interview sessions into a table

2 — DEFINE

Defining Pain Points

From 6 interviewees, 3 pain points are found.

1. Cannot manage time to take a break

2. Wanting to become more competent

3. Fear of negative perception

To tackle the second and third pain points, I may need close consultation with mental issue expert, which may be too much for an individual college project. That’s why I decided to tackle the first pain point.

Pain points of my potential users and suggested solutions from psychologist

I had an expert interview session with a psychology professor who suggested 2 types of solution.

Problem-based solution is for people who have problem managing time which is not what my target group are facing.

Cognitive-based solutions tackle this problem mentally, by helping people to become mindful and be kind to themselves.

The problem my users are facing is the inability to stop working, so cognitive-based solution might work, if we can make them become more mindful about their physical condition.

Persona

Problem Statement

How might we fix being overworked
By using machine learning and human-centred design. So that we are more aware of our work-life balance?

Need Statement

Diona, a college student who cannot stop herself from working, needs to take 15-minute breaks every hour in order to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

1 hour to 15 minutes is the approximate work-to-break ratio that can maximise productivity.

3 — IDEATE

Sketching and Making

I did many sketches and physical mockups. Biggest challenge is that many of my initial ideas already exist and are not ground-breaking enough.

Initial sketches and mockups

User and Expert Interview

I finally came up with 3 possible solutions, and in order to validate these solutions, I talked with both potential users and experts.

3 possible solutions, users’ feedbacks and experts’ feedbacks

Wearable Object annoys users by making loud noise, vibrating and flashing if users don’t stop working when it’s time. Both users and experts said that this method would make task-oriented people become more stressed.

Virtual Friend is the most liked idea, as users prefer friendly way of encouraging to take a break rather than aggressive method.

Mindfulness Kiosk provides mindful games that users can play in public, but many said that it could be combined with the virtual friend idea.

Combining Idea

Users and experts said that the mindfulness game idea and the virtual friend idea could be combined. These two ideas also have strong points that can compensate for each others’ weak points.

Diagram showing how I combine the 2 ideas

Machine Learning Implementation

The virtual friend idea actually started with the idea of giving emotional support, so I want the virtual friend to be able to understand users emotion, so that the AI can become more human-like.

I came across machine learning and found out that it can train the virtual friend to detect users emotion. Teachable Machine gave me a better understanding of how machine learning works. Here’s a diagram explaining how it works.

Diagram explaining how machine learning works

User Flow

I created a user flow to show journey of user and how virtual friend decides to respond in each scenario. This user flow had been refined many times as the features have been developed through the design process.

User flow

Wireframe Sprint

I’ve participated in a design sprint session during my internship, and think that it is a very effective way to generate idea, so I adapted the method into a wireframe sprint session.

Wireframe sketches from wireframe sprint session

I set a 10-minute timer and tried to finish the sketch. I repeat the session 2–3 times per each flow. This way I have more ideas that can be used or combined.

Name and Tagline

I was having a hard time coming up with the name, as I want the name to communicate both friend context and productivity context.

My note evidence of name and tagline brainstorming

“Amigo” is a spanish word which means “friend”. I want the tagline to start with “A” so that it sounds more catchy. The initial tagline was “Avoid toxic productivity”, but I got feedback from my advisor that it presents a negative proposition. Amigo is a solution but the tagline talks about the problem, so I changed it into “Assure healthy work-life balance”.

Art Direction

I looked into references, created a moodboard and established a UI style guide.

User interface style guide

Avatar Direction and Concept Testing

For the avatar design direction, I did a concept testing to know which direction is the most convincing one, including non-human, animals and human.

Concept testing feedback summary

Avatar Design

Most of my potential users like the non-human theme, so I developed the theme into a monster direction. The avatar will have irregular body shape and customizable colors.

Avatar design sketches and final look

Personality

Based on data from user interview, some like friendly way of encouragement some like strict way. Users can also choose avatar’s personality, including “Friendly”, “Neutral” and “Strict”. Here are some samples of wording of each personality. All personalities is capable of showing empathy to users.

Avatar personality language samples

4 — PROTOTYPE

Lo-fi Prototype

Onboarding flow is the most challenging one, as it is the first impression of users, meeting the avatar for the first time. The start-working page is also challenging as I have to visualize the work time and break time.

Lo-fi prototype of Onboarding flow, Start working flow and Mindfulness flow

Page samples of lo-fi prototype

Hi-fi Prototype

This is also another challenging part, since it took a lot of time to create the “right” look and feel in spite of all the references and style guide I have.

User interface exploration of avatar creation flow

I eventually came up with the design I am satisfied with. The prototype flow starts with the onboarding session, then the start working page which also includes mindfulness games.

Hi-fi prototype of onboarding and mindfulness flow

5 — TEST

Planning

I conducted 3 types of user evaluation, each of which has different objectives.

Usability Testing lets users go through prototype to know if the design provide good user experience.

Roleplaying replicates the real situation users are going to encounter, by having users set their own 1-hour timer and call me when time is up, then I’ll sent the link to prototype which ask user whether they wanna leave desk or do mindfulness activities.

Concept Testing is done with users who are not available for roleplaying. I showed the same prototype as roleplaying and asked for feedbacks.

3 types of user evaluation

Here is the diagram showing which test evaluate which part of Amigo.

User evaluation diagram

Evaluation Result

After conducting the tests with 4 potential users, I synthesised the data into the affinity diagram.

Affinity diagram

The most obvious things to improve is the amount of text on each page, and some of the UI elements are still confusing.

UI Improvement

UI of avatar creation flow before and after testing

Users said the hierarchy of each customisation is not obvious enough, so I moved avatar appearance and activeness to the same page, and leave the naming part to the last, since users also said that they tend to name the avatar after seeing the appearance.

UI of start working page before and after testing

I added the feature that allow users to customise the schedule before start working, as the time on the schedule doesn’t make sense. The colour contrast of work and break time is improved as it is not strong enough.

Reflective

What I learned

I have a better understanding of the design thinking process. I get lost really often, not knowing what to do next. When there’s something I’m not sure with, I usually talk to potential users or experts. This is when I know how crucial primary research is.

The most crucial experience I gain from this project is the ability to discuss with other people. User research and evaluation are parts that I found most challenging at first, since I’m not really good at recruiting or talking with strangers. I’ve learned how to ask question that would lead to user insight and to talk in a way user would feel comfortable.

What I can improve

As this is a college project with limited time and resources, there’re many things I wish I could have done if I have more time.

1. I want to discuss with machine learning expert to verify if it is really practicable, as I only have done secondary research about machine learning.
2. I want to consider more about business aspect. If I want Amigo to actually launch, I may have to think about how worth it is to build this product.
3. I need more time with the hi-fi UI. Throughout the process, I’ve spent a lot of time doing research and verifying the solution. When it come to the UI design part, I think I could spent more time on evaluating the UI in more detailed.

Lastly, I would like to thank my studio master, Graham Newman, for supporting me academically and emotionally throughout the year and my technical advisor, Gordon Candelin, for giving me valuable advice.

That’s the end of my journey in my last year of college. You can visit CommDe Creative Walk 2022 website to see all the projects from my classmates.