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A mobile application that helps young adults prevent binge drinking by using data, AI, location services, and smart notifications.
View PrototypeA mobile app that uses AI and location data to understand user behavior, including frequented places, visit times, and binge drinking frequency. It offers personalized drink suggestions considering factors like weight, height, and BMI. It also uses smart notifications, reminding users to stay hydrated or arrange for a ride during their night out.
When I started this project, I was a bit intimidated by the problem space because drinking is an accepted social activity that most people engage in. One of my main concerns was: Do people who binge drink casually even think this is a problem? So, I started with secondary research to see the scope of this issue and later moved on to interviewing people using the Design Thinking methodology.
Design Thinking is a method that keeps the user at the center of every design solution. It involves empathizing with the user, defining a problem, ideating solutions, testing, and reiterating.
One of the first things I discovered while researching was that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes binge drinking (drinking 5 or more alcoholic drinks in less than 2 hours) as the most common and expensive pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States. This behavior is most common amongst young adults ages 18-34.(1)
As I continued my research, I found some shocking annual statistics(2) involving college students and alcohol abuse. Below are some just some of them:
[College students] The first 6 weeks of freshman year are the most vulnerable time for students to engage in heavy drinking due to: a new environment, being away from home, missing friends and family, or feeling lonely.(2)
In short, dopamine makes us feel short-term pleasure and alcohol increases its production, making your brain want more. Unfortunately, alcohol simultaneously hinders other parts of your brain in charge of decision-making, speech, and coordination. That’s why it can often feel like it’s hard to stop once you start.(3)
After I had enough data from my secondary research, I wrote down a few different "How Might We" questions to start framing the problem space. From these, I chose the most compelling one and started my primary research in the form of interviews in order to get first hand accounts on this problem.
How might we help young adults limit their binge drinking during college in order to reduce the risks linked to alcohol abuse?
I conducted interviews on four different people within a specific demographic. By using the Affinity Mapping method and found three main themes between the four participants. Below, you will fin the participant criteria, some of the interview questions, and a snap shot of the affinity map.
The most prevalent theme amongst all interviewees was experiencing unwanted consequences while overdrinking. Whether it was hangovers, driving tickets, or simply losing control of their behavior.
I revised my "How Might We" question after conducting interviews and selecting a theme. The reason behind this revision was that the majority of interviewees don't seem to regret most of the times they drank, only the times where they experienced consequences. With this in mind, I created a different question and changed the tone of my project.
How might we help young adults who are actively trying to drink less avoid binging, in order to prevent hangovers?
Creating a persona to keep the user at the center of my design was key. As Jamie Levy puts it, just because you want a product it doesn't mean everyone else will. I created Connor, who is has a combination of pain points, motivations, and behaviors that all of my interviewees spoke about.
I created an experience map of Connor’s current journey in order to visualize and document his interactions, making it easier to identify opportunities for design intervention in the most needed areas of his user experience.
User stories helped me put myself in the Connor’s shoes, determine what he needs, and understand how he would utilize technology to solve his pain points. Grouping these into epics of similar functionality helped me narrow down which features the app should include.
I created a list of 38 user stories that narrow down Connor's experience. Keeping in mind that he wants to go out and have fun, he just doesn’t want to do it in moderation to avoid negative effects. I narrowed them down to 4 functional epics and chose "Tracking & Reminders" as my main epic because best aligns with Connor's need.
Before I kept emerging myself on creating a solution for Connor, I wanted to see if there was any product on the market that was already addressing his issue. I downloaded some popular apps that help with drinking and realized that most of them are geared towards just tracking drinks, or quitting drinking completely.
By merging various stories from the chosen epic, I created a the following task flow that will address Connor's needs:
While gathering inspiration for my app’s interface, I kept in mind my persona, their needs, and their level of tech-savviness. I looked for features that they will find familiar and understand how to navigate.
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Drawing inspiration from the UI board, I created 3 exploratory sketches per task flow screen in order to lay out different combinations of features and looks for each screen. From there, I chose the best option for usability and compiled my final set:
I created a mid-fi wireframe version of the app to use for testing. Having these will help me test the product without the distraction or influence of colors, etc.
For best results, I conducted user testing on 5 different people within my target demographic. Users were given the following scenario:
After two rounds of user testing, I realized that the most important change I need to make is at the onboarding process, so that users have full clarity of what the app is for and what the features are.
With the app throughly tested for functionality, I was ready to inject color and create animations. At this stage, my iterations did not stop. After creating the final gray scale prototype you see before you, I realized there were still some issues with copy, iconography, and tone. So, I did some further user testing as I was playing with color to ensure the final product caters to the user's needs.
Branding is crucial when it comes to getting a product to the target user. To start with development, I wrote down a list of adjectives that the brand should represent.
I narrowed it down to non-judgemental, caring, responsible, efficient, and grounded. With this words, I curated a mood board that reflected those words and extracted colors to create neighborhoods that reflected different feelings. From there, I chose my brand colors accordingly.
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I chose yellow as my primary brand color because its a welcoming and warm color, but it also conveys caution. This will also be used as my "pop" color for the app's interface. My neutrals are black and white, both of which have a very small hint of the yellow.
The main issue I had when choosing this color is that it often presents accessibility issues when paired with white, so it will often be used paired with black or as an accent.
I initially used "BuzzSmart" as a placeholder brand name for user testing, and users spontaneously reacted positively to it.The word “smart” on the title gives the user autonomy and accountability.
The UI Library is one of the 5 components of the Design System. Building a clear and robust UI Library is the best way to effectively communicate design decisions between cross-functional teams. For my UI Library, I used atomic design principles to showcase how each of the app's elements interacts.
To create the UI library for BuzzSmart, I used the Atomic Design method as explained below:
After injecting color, I realized that some items where not accessible due to lack of contrast, specially the yellow/white components. I used the Stark and Contrast plug-ins to determine where the design needed to be improved for accessibility.
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And finally, here is a walkthrough of what the final product. Thank you for taking the time to look at my process and all the work that went into creating BuzzSmart.
View PrototypeI used a content-first approach to create a single-page, responsive marketing website for BuzzSmart. When it comes to marketing a mobile application, a marketing website is an effective way to drive downloads, create brand awareness, and build trust.
I learned many things while creating this concept from scratch in 10 weeks, including the value of time management, asking questions, and keeping the user at the center of my design. I did not shy away from reiterating multiple times and continued user testing well into the refining stage to ensure that the final product would be something users would find valuable.
During one of the first stages of testing, one of the testers told me that if I were to make a design decision I needed to make sure I could defend it, and I took that to heart. From basic functionality to colors, iconography, and copy, I made an effort to ensure that everything behind this concept had research to back it up.
One of my key learnings was that asking open-ended questions is where most of the UX research magic happens. People tend to give you more honest responses when they aren't attempting to tailor their answers to what they believe you want to hear.
Fancy seeing you all the way down here! I'd like to sincerely thank you for taking the time to look at my work. Feel free to connect with me via Linkedin or email with any questions, suggestion, or comments.
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