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No More Stress

Prolonged stress is one of the most widespread medical conditions in modern societies. NMS was a project aimed at transforming a personalisable exercise program reducing physiological consequences of prolonged stress (designed by psychologists, therapists and psychiatrists) into a mobile app. The design process was oriented around 3 main problems identified during planning and initial research.

1. The app will deliver its value proposition only with a spot-on diagnosis

2. Exercise instructions are way too complex and specific for a mobile screen

3. Interviewed users asked for a non-judging, non-medical and non-technical "look and feel"


DIAGNOSING PROLONGED STRESS IN 12 EASY STEPS
 

One of my biggest contributions to the project was the concept of a diagnostic test. Our experts emphasised countless times that the exercise program prescribed by the app can be only as good as users answers in this test. It was the one single point that could make or break the whole user's experience with the app. We spent hours doodling different approaches towards the form structure and sketching different questions in many ways.  

The other issue was that with the diverse and often abstract character of the questions, users should check every single answer in every single question. It was while wondering how to nudge users towards checking all the answers when we finally got it. Our solution was to animate the form and let users play with every question to find the correct answer. This way users could diagnose prolonged stress and assess its level with a couple of playful swipes.


INHALE AND EXHALE IN MUCH FEWER CHARACTERS

After onboarding and diagnosis, the app prescribes user an exercise program, which contains 1 to 4 sets of daily exercises for 2 to 12 weeks depending on the diagnosed level of stress. Each set of exercises consists of elements of meditation, yoga, visualisation & relaxing techniques and breathing exercises. Every single exercise had a really specific instruction (some up to ~1400 characters). The biggest challenge was to precisely explain exercises in a simple and comprehensive way so we needed to rewrite the whole content.

Looking for the perfect way to teach the user how to perform a certain exercise, we finally decided to divide instructions into streams of message-sized fragments to focus users attention. These fragments of the instruction were additionally reinforced with a guiding animation pinpointing further details like tempo or posture with visual cues. "Let's start" button leaves only the animation on the screen for the estimated duration of the exercise.


STRUCTURING THE EXPERIENCE

With this kind of timeframe, it was essential to provide users with a multidimensional experience and a clear progress illustration. To additionally support users, we chose a conversation-like interface reminding of an ongoing, therapy - like dialogue with one of the experts. To show progress in a relaxing and funny way, users received a cheerful avatar that represented their progress. The whole experience was completed with badges and daily tips. 

We experimented with sounds but our experts demanded that the whole app should be silent as best practice in treating stress is to reduce stimuli - not introduce new ones. The only place with sound in the app was the panic mode. During mild attacks, users would open the app and with a single swipe down try to calm down with a set of relaxing soundscapes paired with breathing exercises.

After 6 months of work, the project got rescheduled after development due to the changes in the structure of the client's company.

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