Sep 2018 - Jan 2019

Make drinking water fun again with behavioral change techniques

Overview
WaterFortune is a consumer health app that motivates people to stay hydrated via Behavioral Change Techniques (BCT). The key features are goal-setting, concise data visualization and most importantly gamification: reach your hydration goal to open up your fortune of the day.
My role
Collaborated with Xuenan Xu for the end to end discovery, user research , interaction design and visual design of the project
Tools & Skills
Sketch, Invision, Principle
Empathy map, Storyboard, Concept testing, Causal diagram, Survey
Problem statement
Albeit knowing the fact that we need to drink enough water, most of us don't actually know what 'enough' means. Let alone knowing the damage of dehydration. However, water is the only required fluid nutrients that human need for survival, yet we still don't drink enough water everyday.
Problem background
So you think you can drink..
Dropping as little as 2% loss of body weight could have a negative impact on human psychological and performance response. Dehydration could result in symptoms such as fatigue, concentration difficulties, dry skin, bad breath, body aches, etc.
Research Insights
Why are we dehydrated?
We conducted literature review, causal diagram and semi-structured interviews with our friends and classmates. The results confirmed the validity of the problems and shed light on reasons causing this problem. ​We then started research about existing consumer digital solutions for dehydration (Competitive analysis) and found our niche place.

Lack of motivation

"I would drink water if I am thirsty" is something mentioned by more than half of our interviewees. However, our bodies could be dehydrated already before you feel thirsty, especially for the elders.

Lack of knowledge

None of our interviewees know 'how much' is enough or too much, and the best timing for hydration. In addition, people don't know the consequences of not drink enough:  

Lack of awareness

Even for those of us who perfectly understand the benefits of hydration and are motivated to stay hydrated, we forget doing it or just don't realize the chances of doing it.

Final Designs
How do we solve the problem
First Touch
Friendly onboarding
Intuitive splash screens to introduce what is Water Fortune and how are we different.
Key Feature 1
Gamification
As users log their water intake and reach their pre-set hydration goal, a "water fortune" message would reveal. Piggy-backing on the popular fortune cookie concept, Water Fortune provides users with a small yet intriguing reward to keep them motivated enough to drink and log info but not too pressured of doing so. In this way, we solved the hardest challenge: lack of motivation of this project.
Key Feature 2
Smart reminder + clear data visualization
There are certain timing of the day that needs hydration more than others, like after just waking up or when weather is hot. With some help from the OS level's data, we can deliver hydration reminders when they are needed the most. The clean data visualization further helped users to keep track of their intake.
Key Feature 3
Customized goal-setting
Goal-setting is the most used BCT methods for health benefits. The crucial part
Design Process
Brainstorm & ideation
Initial hand sketches of the possible gamification for the product
Design Process
Competitive analysis
it's rather clear that the functionality features are really similar across all the apps except one thing, the gamification feature! What's even more exciting was we had started brainstorming about possible gamification methods to make our product fun. The analysis confirmed our preliminary strategy.
Design Process
From lo-fi to hi-fi
Selected versions of the low fidelity wireframes of the designs
Reflection
To design is to always progress
I re-designed several features of this project after "officially" finished it at school. What I thought were small changes gradually turned into a brand new effort of applying newly-equipped knowledge from my first year's enterprise design experiences. I truly enjoyed the process of being able to improve something that I thought was really good.Knowing there will always be things to work on as long as I keep expanding my own arsenal is greatly inspiring, especially during this soul-draining pandemic period. Glad I spent the time.
Graphic Design Works