App Garden
Purpose: Concept Exploration [Work-In-Progress]
Project Role: Concept development, user research
Project Overview
While technology has the capability to empower people on an unprecedented scale, it can also act as a distraction. People constantly self-interrupt to engage in digital distractions. Inspired by some of the principles of slow design, I wanted to help people minimize engaging in digital distractions.
Concept
App Garden is an experience designed to inspire delight from the act of disconnecting and encourage mindfulness and reflection.
Design Question
This project began as an extension of the work and research I did for another project, which was focused specifically on improving focus and concentration in higher education students. However, I wanted to broaden the group of users and the design question itself: How might we encourage people to minimize digital distractions?
Given the prevalence of smartphones and the rising impact of smartphone addiction, I decided to focus specifically on a mobile experience.
Research
I drew from research I had previously conducted, though I intend to conduct more research with a broader group of users to further refine the concept.
Design Requirements
The user research informed the development of a set of design requirements to inform the brainstorming and ideation proecess:
The solution should:
Permit urgent communications
Integrate with simplicity into everyday contexts
Illustrate personal progress and improvement
Incentivize or inspire behavior and habit changes
Reduce feelings of guilt or stress
Be customizable to account for different priorities
The solution should not:
Feel like nagging or micromanagement
Ideation
I did some brainstorming on my own - and specifically focused on ideation around experiences where patience had brought me joy or delight. I circled around a few themes: hiking, baking, gardening, long exposure photography, and watching the sunset. I created a mood board to refine the experiential goals of the project.
After considering each of these experiences, I realized that my experience with gardening has been one of the best examples of slow reward. The satisfaction of watching a plant grow - slowly but surely - is incredibly motivating. I wanted to capture that feeling and transfer it into this experience.
Concept Mock-up + Wireframes
I designed the concept of an App Garden, where a user can chose where to “plant seeds” on the distracting apps they want to limit usage of. As they continue to stay away from the app, flowers and plants begin to grow to cover the app icon itself. The user is never prevented from accessing an app - but when they do, the garden over that app disappears.
I created a concept mock-up for the solution and wireframes in Figma to articulate the flow of the experience for a user.
Next Steps
This idea is currently in a purely conceptual stage (and faces some technical limitations on the iOS platform), but the next step is to create a low-fi prototype of the experience and run some usability testing to gather additional feedback for refinement and further iteration.