As a full-time employee looking to vent, I want to write my feelings and thoughts out within a timed self-destruct message, so that I can let go of my frustrations without leaving a trace.

Problem Background

Users need a convenient way to practice mindfulness because this is a healthy habit that people can develop to cope with the stress of daily life.

Our users are people living busy lives looking for a moment of peace. Being stressed negatively affects a person's overall health. Based on user research, we discovered that people prefer to relieve stress through meditation, venting, and journaling.

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Research Insights & User Pain Points

We conducted preliminary user research in the form of interviews and surveys in order to figure out how people cope with stress and practice mindfulness. The 5 participants we interviewed were either full-time students or full-time employees.

We discovered that users think journaling is a good way to decompress. Whether it was to write affirmations or to vent, journaling was regarded as a good exercise to help practice mindfulness. We also found out that all users prefer to practice deep breathing techniques as a way to calm down and reduce stress. All users were aware of the benefits of meditation but were not sure how to start meditating. All participants had busy schedules and only had a few minutes a day to practice mindfulness.

In order to get more quantitative data, we surveyed 25 participants to better understand their coping habits. We discovered that:

76% of users are between 19 - 25 years old
60% of participants feel stressed on a daily basis.
More than 50% of participants claimed that the main cause of stress was either work or school.
More than 50% of participants prefer to listen to music in order to calm down.

At the end of our research, our team managed to validate the need for a time-efficient way to practice mindfulness and better understand the needs and pain points of our target user.

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Solution Explanation

Based on our target users’ pain points, we knew we wanted to create a web application with the following features:

1. A way to allow users to vent without the repercussions of their expressing their frustrations being held against them.

‍As one user said, “When you say something you can’t take it back.” As a result of this finding, we decided to prioritise a feature that would allow users to write out their frustrations within a certain time period. After their session ends, the message is deleted without leaving a trace.

2. A way for users to practice heavy breathing or meditation.

Most users preferred to practice heavy breathing while listening to music. As a result of this finding, we decided to also add a feature that would allow users to practice meditation accompanied by white noise in short and convenient sessions.

Due to time constraints, we could only prioritise these 2 features for our MVP. We decided to build a web application as it was the most feasible solution that best matched our team's skillset.

Lofi Mockups

Iterative Design Learnings

After we showcased our prototype to the users again, we learned that we needed to provide a message to notify them when a meditation or vent session was over. Before this finding, the app would automatically transfer the user back to the homepage after a session was over without warning. Providing a pop-up informing the user when the session ended and then transferring them to the homepage provided a better user experience.

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Implementation Details

Technical implementation

Hosted on GitHub Pages, our Tech Stack is HTML, CSS, JS, and Bootstrap.

Technical challenges

The hardest part of the development was the timer since it had a lot of logic.
There are no scaling issues. Our key takeaways are to research and learn obstacles and challenges we saw beforehand to ensure we were on track for development.

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Future Steps

We will not be continuing the project, however, after testing our MVP with our target audience we learned that users also want a voice recording enabled venting feature. Another good improvement for our project would be to develop a mobile app alongside our web app.

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Learnings

Product Manager Learnings:

Abe Noori

Co.Lab was a very interesting experience for me. Some of my learnings were the importance of the agile methodology and performing sprints throughout the design and development life cycle. The key to this consistent execution was ensuring there was communication between our team.

Designer Learnings:

Luciano Duran

I learned how to work within agile methodology in order to build and iterate design solutions in a time-effective manner. I also learned how to communicate and present solutions to developers in order to understand their feasibility. Most importantly I learned that involving everyone early on in the brainstorming process helps foster better and more well-rounded solutions.

Designer Learnings:

Jo Sturdivant

Adapting to an Established Team: Joining the team in week 6 of 8 was challenging, as I had to quickly adapt to existing workflows, dynamics, and goals. This mirrors real-world situations where you often integrate into teams mid-project, and flexibility is essential.
Work-Blocking for Efficiency: With only two weeks to complete the project, I learned the importance of a structured work-blocking system. This approach allowed me to manage my time effectively and meet deadlines under pressure.
Making Data-Driven Design Decisions: Unlike my past projects, I had to rely on research conducted by others. This was a valuable experience in using pre-existing data to guide design decisions, helping me focus on the core insights without starting from scratch.

Developer Learnings:

Matthew Wei

Co.Lab was a worthwhile experience to really get hands-on with your peers and mentors. I learned to be able to work with people from different disciplines and communicate with each other whether it be our schedules or ideas. I also learned to be more accountable with my tasks or attending meetings.

Developer Learnings:

Vanady Beard

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As the back-end developer, I learned how important it is to create efficient and reliable systems that support the entire application. This experience also taught me the importance of optimising the database and ensuring the backend is scalable and easy to maintain.

Developer Learnings:

Stephen Asiedu

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As a back-end developer, I've come to understand the importance of being familiar with various database systems and modules. This knowledge enables me to build diverse applications and maintain versatility in my work. I've also learned that the responsibility for making the right choices rests on my shoulders, guided by my best judgement.

Developer Learnings:

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Developer Learnings:

Maurquise Williams

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Process of Creating an MVP: Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) taught me how to focus on delivering core functionalities balancing between essential features and avoiding scope creep.
Collaboration in a Real-World Tech Setting: This experience taught me how to collaborate efficiently in a fast-paced tech environment, keeping the team aligned and productive, even while working remotely across time zones.
Sharpening Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills: This experience honed my ability to think critically and solve problems efficiently. By tackling challenges and finding quick solutions, I sharpened my decision-making and troubleshooting skills in a dynamic, real-world setting.

Developer Learnings:

Jeremiah Williams

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All in all this experience was very awesome I learned that in coding with others being transparent is key

Developers Learnings:

Justin Farley

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I learned how important communication is when working with a team. Communication provides understanding, advice, ideas, and much more. While working with the product team, I’ve found that communication keeps everything flowing smoothly. Working with a team also showed me that every member brings something different to the table and we all have to work together in order to align and meet our end goal.

Full Team Learning

We learned that feature prioritisation is crucial in avoiding unnecessary work and developing a functional MVP within our target timeline. We learned to simplify our design by focusing on the provided features that support the main job to be done. Adopting this mindset helped us create a functional prototype in order to figure out if the solution is viable.