Headspace Progression Tracking

Step 1: Product Overview

I reviewed the the entire product and it's various user steps and notated down each of the user and task flow for the main features in the application. This was eventually narrowed down to the Meditation Sessions available in Headspace, and the Account Summary Page where users can review their metric and progress.

Step 2: Problem Definition and User Persona

Headspace is an app that provides guided meditation session, and educational content for users. Typical users are either beginners or have intermediate experiences with meditation. From the overall market analysis, I dove deeper and researched the main user problems and meditation problems that individuals experience early on in the meditation practice, as well as some challenges with meditation in general.

From there I identified the top 3 user challenges and top 3 meditation challenges experienced: 

• Motivation
• Planning
• Emotional Hesitation
• The "Right" Way to Meditate
• Meditation and User Variance
• Defining "Success" in Mindfulness

Step 3: Identifying Areas of Opportunities

The overall meditation user-flow is intuitive and easy for a user to follow. However, a lot progression tracking is centered around usage and consistency. This makes sense as most experienced meditators see that consistency is key in improving mindfulness and experiencing change.

As Andy Puddicombe, Co-founder of Headspace, describes it "Real progress could arguably be said to be found in the willingness to sit down, day after day, no matter how you are feeling, and to simply be present with the mind exactly as it is."

However, for new users who already are facing the challenge of incorporating a new habit or routine into his/her/their day-to-day, the immediate benefits and the subtle changes are harder to identify and correlate to the meditation practice.

Step 4: Ideation and Design

With the meditation content already segmented by specific associated intentions that the user is interested in experiencing, there is room to incorporate a means for user to track their thoughts and feelings.

The end goal is to provide a time-series, visual indicator where individuals can identify their own progress, intention, and mindfulness, then correlate it to the usage and duration of meditation.

A successful example could be found in the Dear Data Project, where two data visual designers documented each week a particular sensation, action, and/or thought. As said by one of the designers, “I like to think that this kind of data collection can also be a form of meditation, because it helps you to slow down and really live in the present, at least for a moment”. Other design inspiration I drew from included leveraging research and visual indicators used helping patient with chronic pain manage their feelings and perspective around pain day-to-day.

Step 5A: Wireframe and Prototype (Meditation Session)

I proceeded to diagram the new userflow and taskflow that would introduce intention setting and mindfulness assessment in the meditation page.

After the diagram was created, wireframes and low-fi designs were created, I compared the flow and prototype experience and iterated over until the eventual user feedback and experience felt seamless. It felt important to include in a new feature where users felt they were empowered with each additional step, rather than introduce more cumbersome steps and complexities.

Step 5B: Wireframe and Prototype (Account Page)

The main challenge was converting the self-collected data from the Meditation Session into a cohesive summary.

Rather than opting for a typical bar graph or line graph, I tried to explore variations in design that was able to create a meaningful story for the end-user.

At the end, I concluded that for a longer-duration timeline, a multi-line graph was best in expressing the direct benefits that meditation has in alleviating stress, improving the mood and overall mindfulness.

For shorter durations, it felt like there was more room for opting out of the usual constraints. In the initial stages of the wireframe, I opted for more abstract and organic forms of visualization.

In the final design, I ended up using a bar graph and emoticons to provide a more in-depth, granular narrative that felt both quantitative and qualitative.