Project Overview
Design for Avocademy's Designathon 2022 competition. We picked a metaverse prompt and developed a VR application to bring you a revolutionary real-time relaxing experience.
Team member
Chia-I Chen
Taya Tepudom
Timeline
6 days
Tools
Challenges
The initial problem was that we realized how the pandemic had changed our daily life in past years. we want to understand how the new work environment affects their mental health
Covid 19 has dramatically changed our lives over the past year
67% of the employee in the U.S are working from home
The shift to remote work led to the complete collapse of the work-home boundary
Research
We gathered both qualitative and quantitative data to better understand the problem space by exploring users' current work settings and conducting a survey to get user insights and work habits. We received 56 responses from aged 25 to 40 who work remotely.
Takeaways
69% of WFH workers have high stressed levels and burnout symptoms
WFH invades personal life
More than 70% of the users prefer to be surrounded by a natural environment to relieve/reduce their stress
71% prefer working out to release stress
Nature sounds can help reduce stress
Work-life balance is important to the majority of users in order to be motivated and productive
User persona
We created our user persona based on the information we gathered. Kevin is a computer scientist who lives in New York City. Since the pandemic, he has been working from home. He devotes most of his time to projects and never has time for himself. Therefore Kevin needs to find a way to balance his personal and professional goals
How Might WE...
How might we design a product that helps our users reduce stress and increase pleasant feelings while working from home
Problem Statement
Employees who work from home need to balance their job and personal lives in order to maintain their mental health
Design approach
Now we're going on to the design; initially, we approached our design from many angles, and we experiment with both AR and VR. However, when considering the consequences of each. we realized that through talking to our users on daily basis, using VR is the greatest way to visualize our goals.
Journey map
We established a scenario by creating a user journey map utilizing information from our user base. This allowed us to make reasonable assumptions about what they would do to find an ideal solution. to ensure that platform is intuitive and user-friendly.
UX Scenario
Kevin has been working from home since the pandemic, and he just finished creating software that took weeks, leaving his head fried and exhausted. He needs to get some fresh air and clear his mind before working on the next projects
Goals
Work-life and home-life balance
Maintain productivity
Reduce stressed
Maintain mental health and physical well-being
Feature prioritize metric
We use I like, I wish, What if method to gather feedback and brainstorm ideas that have not previously been considered. We also construct product features and prioritize them based on user input.
User flow
To address our goals and enhance the overall relaxing session, we created a user flow for immersive experiences that allow users to quickly escape from their high-stress environment.
For user flow, we want to focus on 2 main features
Breathing exercise
Calming sceneries
Wireframes
we design with the goal of incorporating features that most directly addressed user wants and needs uncovering in our user research.
Style Guide
When choosing brand colors and logo design, we also leverage color psychology to portray the blue sky and white velvet clouds to express the sense of laying down on the cloud and letting it go.
High fidelity
We've taken all the elements through the design process and the features we wanted to include, and we create the high-fidelity prototype for the VR device.
Greeting
Start with a breathing exercise
Breathing exercise
We included this 4-7-8 breathing exercise because this type of mindful breathing has been shown to have many benefits for stress reduction and relaxation
Main Menu
Main menu includes different categories of environments
Sub Menu
Sub menu provide users with selection of sceneries to choose from
VR Scenery
VR images give users a sense of escape from reality and immersing in the tranquil environment
Final Thought/Conclusion
Future Iterations:
Video with soothing sounds VR sceneries
Stress level wearable device to measure stress level
Add the aroma and feeling simulation
Add more variety of environment
Lessons Learned:
First time designing for metaverse with a VR device, we learned a new platform and had fun designing it
In order to understand how VR device works, we tried VR games and learned how it feels in the VR world
We learned to push ourselves and finish this project in 6 days
