Tiny logs
Designing a digital experience to be thankful of small things in life on an everyday basis.
Designing a digital experience to be thankful of small things in life on an everyday basis.
Being thankful (of life and things that surround us) helps us to notice the things which are already present in our life— from the smallest things to the big ones. It helps us not take things around us for granted and acknowledge our blessings. Living with gratitude makes us more aware of the good that surrounds us.
Aug - Sep 2020
I worked as a Project owner and UX lead focussing on Secondary research, Conceptualisation, Wireframes, Visual Design, Usability testing.
2 UX Designers
As per multiple researchers across the world, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive, and builds strong relationships.
"Gratitude promotes optimism and helps us to develop a more positive outlook. It lets us pause for a moment to reflect on something we have in our life right now instead of always striving for more … the next goal, the new dress, the new toy, the new car, or the house renovation" — Deborah Jepsen
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” — Dalai Lama
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” —Oprah Winfrey
Tinylogs is your everyday companion to write things you are thankful for with ease. It encourages the habit of being grateful everyday, one tiny log at a time. The name of the app takes its inspiration in finding joy in tiny things in life and logging them in the journal—a digital journal to log our tiny blessings.
The onboarding experience is designed to get the user to writing right away without asking for any login information. All the data is stored in the users device.
After first log has been entered, user is given a prompt to add the new one from the floating icon located at the bottom right. Only one pop-up to set reminders to write on scheduled time is displayed to the user after first log.
The options to customise colours and discover the logs serendipitously is shown if the same have not been used for the first 30 days. We worked on a system to map the frequency of prompts for the user based on their usage of the features in the app. The nudge is designed to be non intrusive and deliberately timed to fit into the actions of the users. As we are now in the process of building the app, we will experiment and see what works best for the users.
The home screen provides the user with positive messaging (variable: a different positive message aiding gratitude journaling each time the app is opened), encouraging the act of gratitude journaling, each time it is opened.
With clear entry point to add a log on the home page, the writing flow is designed to keep focus on the simple act of writing a gratitude.
The user has the option to enter a log to a past date. Many a times while journaling memories, we remember a specific moment in the past and want to make a note of them. This affordance enables users to log the memories of a distant past, anytime in the gratitude journal.
The writing flow has prompts to help the user when stuck or in need for inspiration. This was one of the key asks during the research phase of the project and we incorporated it to help guide the gratitude flow. Clicking on the 'bulb' in the writing flow activates the prompts.
In future we plan to make the prompts more informative and guided. We will learn from our users and iterate on this v1 of guided prompts.
Clicking on the 'bulb' in the writing flow activates the prompts. Tapping on the card pins the prompt to the writing flow. The prompt can be dismissed as per user need while writing.
The past logs can be accessed via a dedicated tab. Seeing what people have written about (themes) was one of the key asks in the user research. The user on landing on the logs page gets an overview of the number of logs, as-well as the key things they have written about. They can dive deeper into the entries by clicking on any month.
The logs section given a thematic overview of what 'you' have been writing about, motivating to click and read the past gratitude memory.
The past logs can be accessed and discovered in a serendipitous manner from the discover section prominently displayed on top in the Logs page. The intent here is poetic discovery of the things users have been thankful for as tiny stars in the sky. We received positive response to this interaction pattern in usability study and have optimised this flow for discovery and sharing with friends and family.
We wanted to bring a sense of poetic discovery and serendipity to the act and the process of writing a gratitude. The metaphor of "thanks" stored as "stars in the sky" helps create a sense of nostalgia, warmth and wonder. We have plans of making this interaction more immersive and poetic. We will hear from our users and iterate.
The serendipitous discovery is designed to prompt sharing with friends and family with a prominent call to action to share! While the log can be shared from other entry points too, an old memory of 'something good' in the past will trigger the want for sharing it with someone. We received positive feedback on 'Share' being the primary call to action here from the users. Users can also edit the log before sharing.
The insights intend to encourage writing by providing valuable data points about the writing behaviour to the user. In our research, we found that streaks provide motivation to people and we have incorporated the same. Settings can be accessed from the insight page and can be used to customise the app— change theme colour, notification time. Since all the data is stored on the users phone with no login information asked while onboarding, users can upload the content onto their drives from Backup and restore.
The insights provide key information about the writing patterns like the number of days you have been writing, the total number of logs and words written.
The calendar provides an overview of the days you have been thanking/writing and provides visual impetus to have more written days.
This project is a labour of love, done remotely in the evenings (with a full time job during the days) over the course of two months (and many long conversations over notion!) with a friend Parijat.
Our process, non linear in its trajectory was:
Empathise —> Define —> Ideate —> Prototype —> Test —> Build (in process)
We started the project with a short online survey to understand the attitude towards gratitude journaling:
• Are people actively writing journals?
• Do people write about things they feel grateful about?
• Do people know the importance of gratitude journaling?
Insights from the online survey
✅ Importance of gratitude is not known to most of the people.
✅ Majority of the people thought of things to be grateful for sometimes.
✅ Self reflection as a habit is not seen positively by some of the participants.
✅ People are motivated to keep journals but are still not actively doing it.
We dived deeper into understanding of 'gratitude' with the following lingering questions at this stage
• What it stands for people at large?
• Different methods people employ for being thankful?
• The impact of gratitude on our everyday being?
We looked at the various gratitude methods that people employ in their lives presently and made a note of the prevalent methods.
"In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships."
We did a quick review of the popular apps which are helping people be mindful of gratitude. Our aim was to understand current user expectations, interactions and pain points.
Common features across apps
• All the apps reviewed had basic journal keeping as a feature.
• They focused on some way to inculcate a habit for the user.
• Video or text based guidance or cues for people to help them complete their journey.
• Personalization features like colors and backgrounds.
• Social features aimed at creating community and increasing engagement.
• Gamification features aimed at increasing motivation and retention was common.
• A way to backup or export one's entries for safekeeping.
Common Pain points
• Intrusive suggestions while using the app.
• Lack of concurrency leading to lack of content on social features.
• Overwhelming personality questions.
• Excessive notifications.
• Unexpected paywalls after user has shared their data.
• The app intends to become a part of the everyday life of people who spend a large chunk of their times on mobile phone
• People from cities in the age group of 16 to 35
User Persona
At this stage of the project, we defined our user persona to be a motivated writer, using other apps to write already. While the product will help everyone journal about things they are grateful for, a persona already motivated to write, will be able to transition easily.
Neha Vaswani
25 yrs - Software professional
Actively journals on the note taking app on her phone
✅ Goals & motivations
• Be grateful to friends and family
• Remember to focus on the right things
• Keep sane through the chaos
Pain Points
•Often find no motivation in writing her thoughts down
• Really wishes amidst so many apps she finds one which gives her a simple and effective personalised journaling solution
After speaking to multiple people about gratitude journaling, we did a user journey map of our intended users, using one of the many writing apps (not focussed on the gratitude experience) and identified the shortcomings in the experience.
The key 'How might we' identified in the Define phase were used as a premise to brainstorm on key ideas
How might we associate gratitude journaling as a part of self growth?
How might we associate gratitude journaling as a part of self growth?
How might we make the gratitude experience immersive and engaging?
How might we make the gratitude experience personalised and customisable?
We built mobile first information architecture based upon user intent.
Tiny logs everyday!
In order to make this a part of the everyday habit, we paid attention to addressing different aspects of the user's usage cycle.
Before getting on to the drawing board, key design principles were formulated to guide the decisions that were to be made during the course of explorations.
1. Effortless and focussed writing experience
2. A sense of serendipity and wonder
3. Encourage the feelings of gratitude
4. A sense of awareness of gratitude patterns
5. Personalised experience
Various models were explored for the writing experience. Shown below are a couple that made the cut towards the end of which we chose one model that aligned with our design principle.
In model 1, we were exploring the idea of letting the users set a goal of the number of gratitude entries they want to make per day. They could tag the entries which will help them to locate them later and derive insights based on the tags used
Model 2 explored the idea of allowing users to add another gratitude from the writing flow itself, while the first gratitude is posted. As in model 1, tags were a part of the writing flow if user wishes to add them.
In this model, user can add one log at a time and provides for a focussed writing experience. Users don't have to set a goal of minimum number of entries a day. We removed the functionality of tags as we got lukewarm response for its usage—5 of the 8 people shown the previous two models with tags said that it is highly unlikely they will pause to add tags while writing.
We decided to go forward with model 3 as it aligned closest with our design principle of giving user an effortless and focussed writing experience.
We wanted users to be able to access their past logs with ease. Additionally we were exploring the idea of giving users an overview of there writing themes when they decide to revisit the months gone by, :)
Here the past entries are pivoted on Timeline and Tags, two ways to access old logs. We decide against this model, as mentioned before, for tags to be useful they will require volume of content and generating that volume of content will require commitment from the users. We gathered feedback around this model and 5 of the 8 people shown said that it is highly unlikely they will pause to add tags while writing.
This model gives an overview of the content that the users have been writing. Users can dive deeper into the month to read more about the logs. 6 out of the 8 folks we spoke to prefered this model.
We wanted to bring in a sense of nostalgia and wonder to the reading experience. The act of writing gratitude is a personal act with lots of memories attached. We want to create an alternate way of reading the past logs if the user wishes to, one which has more poetry and wonder!
Each time the user clicks on the dedication location on home page, a surprise entry from the past is shown as a scratch card. User needs to scratch the card to read the memory from the past. We decide against this model as the friction to read had unfavourable response from 7 of the 8 participants. Also model 2, which you will see below made more poetic and metaphoric sense.
The logs are saved as stars in the sky and tapping on the stars displays the entries serendipitously. 6 of the 8 people said that they would use this interaction, while 2 considered it of no use at all, :).
Insights on the writing patterns was of utmost importance for the users, to get an overview and be encouraged to continue with their gratitude journeys within the app
Model 1
This model explored showing the themes of the content of the writing pattern in insights. We got strong feedback on this being of value but users expected to see it with there past logs.
✅ Model 2
The insights provide key information about the writing patterns like the number of days you have been writing, the total number of logs and words written. The calendar provides an overview of the days you have been writing and provides visual impetus to have more written days.
We did remote usability testing with the selected models and collected 26 responses in total.
Writing flow
“I didn’t see any writing prompts”
“It took a significant amount of time for me to locate the "done" button.”
• The prompts in the writing flow were not seen by almost half of the participants.
• 40 percent of the participants were not able to locate the 'done' button.
Reading experience
“The stars part was quite lovely and thoughtful, however it needs to stick out more”
“Love to see what i have written over months highlighted”
“Makes the experience feel much more special”
• Users had positive feedback on the serendipitous writing experience overall.
• The logs section was well received, however there were 3 participants who wished to see there entries via a calendar!
Insights
“I like it that i can see the days am writing in a calendar view”
• Success rate was 100%. No-one had a issue finding out where to look for insights.
• Core insights which users value is 'what is it they are thankful for the most' and 'the number of days they have been writing'.
All the feedback was gathered and changes were made to the flows accordingly.
End to end product cycle
The project has been an immense learning experience of conceptualising and working towards building a product end to end, from locating a premise to making it ship (ongoing efforts), it has been an eventful ride.
User Feedback
Through constant iteration while designing, a lot of our hypothesis have been invalid and it has been an immense learning experience iterating on those and improving on the go as per feedback.
Designing for a better relationship with our phones
This has been a recurring theme in projects that interest me and this project took a representation of an app that can be used on a day to day basis to bring tiny positive change.
Side projects FTW!
The passion project has given an opportunity to talk to a lot of people about their interests and how they sustain a side passion project. As we slowly build this, looking forward to a roller coaster ride of new adventures.
