ALOKA

To create a gamified wellness program to support breathwork, yoga, meditation, and selfcare. Also including; journaling, an online & real-life community, live events, and physical goods for purchase.

There was a good deal of thought put into how often a user should be changing levels. The inspiration for the leveling system comes from the video game world. Video games have become an addictive past time, the thought is to harness that addiction for a positive goal.

Each level gets incrementally harder with the ultimate goal for the practice being to become a part of the user’s daily life. Jumping into an all-out daily routine from day one can be very daunting. A reward system of tangible physical rewards being a motivation to stay motivated.

The original idea was to have an ideal level change every solstice (6 months). However, after many interviews it came to light that a 6 month completion time for level 1 was too long.

Reviewing players within the same space helps to understand what the main differentiators are and to bring those features to the forefront of the product. Building the same product as someone else is unlikely to create any incentive for someone to use your product. Additionally, learning what other apps’ painpoints are generates ideas on how to improve on them. As well as what competitors are doing right, so that inspiration might be drawn from them.

Apps reviewed: Headspace, Calm, Ten Percent, Breathe, Meditation, Insight Timer, Mind Tune, Oak

The color palate. There are 9 levels and each level has its own color, those colors also align to the traditional colors of the chakras (except for black and white). I each level is meant to create a new experience for the user. When the user is level 2, the primary color in the interface will be red. Additionally, when the user is using the app and if a friend were to see them on the app they would immediately know what level they were. This is a secret egotistic motivation to progress in the levels.

The white marble has a timeless and premium feel. The marble is the solid base upon which everything sits.

Copper is a nice compliment to the white marble and the metal is frequently used in Ayurvedic medicine for its alkaline properties. It’s small references like these that I consider to be little Easter eggs within the app.

I had the overall idea and some notes of features I wanted, but this is when I had to break it down into actual pages and components that were going to be in the app. With Aloka I wanted to include a majority of what I thought would be in the final product (not MVP). From these designs I would then distill the design into what could be viable to be built for a beta. The main reason for this is that it’s easier to show the developer the roadmap of where the app will be going in the phase 2. That way the dev can plan for the future.

I’m a big fan of getting tactile with designing before taking it into the computer. I find that when using the computer to sketch often times you’ll design things similar to the way that you’ve designed things before. Taking the time to put pen to paper helps to think differently, even if it does look like just a bunch of chicken scratch.

The Aloka app currently needs more of a social component. I’m looking at other apps containing community to see what information architecture and interaction design they use to gain inspiration. I’m primarily focused on finding apps with small social interactions (social lite), but I’m also looking at bigger social apps (Instagram, Twitter, etc) to see what the apps with the greatest reach are doing.

Apps reviewed: Instagram, Spotify, Strava, TicTok, Twitter, Foursquare, Linkedin

With each mockup a prototype was made and shown to users. After interviews and discussions with users on the overall experience and app viability, design revisions were made both architecturally and visually.

I created this prototype in InVision. It’s invaluable in telling the story of Aloka to interviewees, developers, and partners.

Showing the prototype gave me the ability to validate that what I was creating was something people wanted to use. I always ask users how it could be better, and I never trust an answer of “it’s great”. There’s always something that can be improved. Also, just show and telling the app would often give me insights as to how things could be better improved. I audio recorded many of the interviews so that I can go back and listen to the user’s insights.