PET: Personal Emotions Tracker

THE PROBLEM

Existing mood trackers limit users to fixed interaction methods, restricting flexibility of use. Many mood-tracking apps require extensive journal input, hence discouraging long-term adoption by users. Current mood trackers lack engaging mood trends & insights, hindering self-reflection. Moreover, current mood trackers lack personalization and adaptability, providing a generic user experience.

THE CHALLENGE

It was a challenge to find a tracking method with a low-input overhead to gather comprehensive mood data. Incorporating contextual data about the user to provide an engaging user experience also proved to be difficult. Moreover, building the foundation for long-term behavior change through self-reflection turned out be the biggest challenge.

RESEARCH

I looked at the Play Store and academic papers to find opportunities for improvement and current research efforts in this domain. Automated mood sensing via smartwatches has a low-input overhead for the user & provides quality sleep, activity, stress data. Advancements in NLP enable the creation of a powerful chatbot that can conduct conversational surveys and extract emotions from responses. Data visualizations and usage trends offer closeness with the user’s past mood, inviting opportunities for self-reflection & behaviour change. Custom avatars and contextual data about the user’s daily events drastically add to the personalized user experience.

THE STORYBOARD

SOLUTION

PET offers users a holistic approach to mood tracking: Interact with the app using 3 modalities — Chatbot, Survey, One-Touch (tap an emoji). View charts & trends about user’s past mood to promote reflection. On the smartwatch, respond to quick mood prompts & interact with chatbot. Customize animal avatar & view user’s realtime mood depicted on the avatar.

ITERATING ON WIREFRAMES

Users wished to see detailed trends, simpler surveys & clearer interaction options. I conducted a round of user testing on the wireframes to uncover user opinions on my preliminary thoughts. Based on their feedback, I iterated on the wireframes to further refine my designs.

Wireframe Iterations

A personalized & informative home page

PET helps you on your terms via Chatbot, Surveys & One-Tap

Trends help you stay on top of your mood

Stay updated on the go with a smartwatch companion app

Interactive Prototypes

Outcome

Delivered an interactive working prototype that made mood tracking personalized & interactive. This design was selected to be featured in The Best Illustrated App Designs by DesignRush.

Reflection & Future Scope

• Conducting literature review led to a stronger concept and well-thought out functionalities for the app.
• Being my first time conducting user testing, I was able to realize its value and witnessed first-hand the impact it has on a product.
• Designing for the Apple Watch compelled me to prioritize and showcase only the most essential elements on the interface.
• More time and resources would’ve added a layer of customization, pertaining to the animal avatars and depicting user’s real-time mood on the animal.