Vessential

Vessential: Leading you to better health, everyday.

User Insight + User Experience Design

George Mason University AVT 414 UXD Course (2020)

A semester long project conceptualizing and designing a health and wellness app focused on vitamin intake.

Background

Objective

Challenge

Project process

During my UX Design Course, I had the opportunity to come up with ideas and design an app on any topic of my choice with a deliverable assignment of research and 3 high fidelity mock ups.

At that time, I was really focused on my health. I was exercising, drinking plenty of water, eating well, and taking vitamins. This motivated me to create an app that would address the lack of information and support for vitamins and nutrition. I believe that everyone should be able to take care of their health without needing specialized knowledge. Vitamins are a simple solution to address nutritional deficiencies. However, there are so many types and brands of vitamins available, which creates confusion. The overwhelming choices and limited knowledge on which vitamins are suitable for specific health issues create a gap in public health.

“More than 2 billion people in the world today are estimated to be deficient in key vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin A, iodine, iron and zinc.”

— World Health Organization

Knowing which daily vitamins to take is a challenge for people without a background in health, nutrition, or thorough research.

Steps using a design thinking system using programs such as Google Forms, Google Analytics, InVision, and Adobe XD.

Competitive analysis
Interview
Survey

Project scope
Features
Personas

MVP
Userflow
Sitemap

Wireframe
Hi-fis
Visual design

Research

Competitive analysis

Interviews

Survey (Q&A)

The vitamin tracker is an app with very simple design. It doesn’t offer any resources for the user it’s more so a tool for someone that already knows what they’re doing and what to take. The layout of the reminder is concise and I will be having a similar customizable reminder with the reminder name, vitamins, notify on date, and repeat.
Vitamin hero has a similar sign in that I will be having, connected to your email. It also starts off with a survey however it is not very thorough. You also have to pay to get your results $5.99 per week which is one of the most expensive apps I’ve seen, if I ever pay for an app it’s usually a one time purchase of a dollar or two.
Vitamins & Minerals has a great drop down menu and vitamin catalog with an overview, how does it work, uses, side effects, interactions, dosing, and other names. You can “like” or bookmark the vitamin or mineral and have it saved for future reference. The drop down menu also is a plug in for other apps on the app store related to health like Drug Dictionary and 1001+ Tips. The Design is like the other three apps, very plain and not engaging or captivating.
Care of is the most well designed and similar product to VESSENTIAL. It begins with a sign in page and a survey. This product is quite similar except that at the end of the survey and product recommendations Care/of provides a package of the vitamins to buy directly from, when I took the survey I was recommended 5 vitamins for almost $60 a month. However this is not cost effective when just one generic bottle of vitamins costs $3-$5 for 100 pills that lasts well over a month.

1. Name, age, employment?

5. Are you in good health?

6. Do you have any health concerns and goals that aren't in need for treatment or surgery, such as fatigue, increase in energy, better sleep, hair growth?

10. Do you take any vitamin supplements?

11. Would you like to take any if you're not or more if you are?

13. Would you use an app like this?

14. Does this app remind you of any other apps?

15. What features do you want included?

16. Are there any current features you think are unnecessary?

17. Do you have your phone notifications on?

The 3 interviews I conducted on a 22 year old woman, 25 year old woman, 49 year old man were pretty informative. i received suggestions like linking amazon product reviews would help establish trust which I think can be incorporated in the vitamin catalog with all of the actual products. Another suggestion was to include a question about ethnicity when taking the survey because that effects health backgrounds. One issue that came up was that a user may lose interest in the app once they are given their supplement recommendations so an incentive I thought of was collaborating with stores and brands for coupons if you consistently log your vitamin intake on the checklist.