Apple Teams: iWatch app Activity feature — UX/UI Case Study
Project Background
This is a one week project I made for the Product Design Challenge created by productdesigntips.
Design a gamified competition feature for a smartwatch app to encourage people from one office commute to work on foot or cycle.
I picked this challenge for two main reasons:
This is a topic I truly care of. Therefore trying to find a solution to make our planet greener reducing the CO2 emissions, even if in small quantities, has made me deeply motivated.
In second place, the limited iWatch artboard space would have increased the problem solving complexity and that’s what I’ve been searching for.
Intro
Private transport is one of the world’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases: globally, transport accounts for around a quarter of CO2 emissions.
In our car-centred lives, we have to cut down the carbon footprint of our daily commute.
In many countries, even short journeys (mainly for working reasons) which could often be made on foot or by bike are usually made by car; in those cases employers should promote green commuting to avoid using the car altogether.
But how can companies involve their employees?
This is Teams, a unique feature for iWatch Activity app which allows group of people to have fun competing in different challenges.
The process
Research
The goal of the research was to understand the target and to how to solve the problem in the best way.
To do that I took my previous working reality as an ideal environment; therefore I conducted interviews with 10 colleagues from different roles and departments.
Key learnings emerged from this first research stage:
- Focus on teams and not for individuals
- Always reward the effort
- Set precise goals
After that I conducted some extra researches to try to analyse those results from a neuroscientifical point of view. This allowed me to go deeper in the subject and be able to built a tailor-made gamified feature.
The followings are relevant abstracts I took from two cognitive psychology books:
Shared and achievable goals
A sense of purpose triggers the limbic region of our brain, which is the part that produces emotions. Limbic system influences our decisions and behaviour.
The moderate stress involved, by assigning to a team an achievable task, causes the release of neurochemicals. That’s a key factor to increase people’s focus and scale up social connections. This only takes place if the challenge is achievable and has a clear end point. Unattainable goals just make people less motivated.
Recognise the effort
Recognition is one of the most powerful psychological driving factors of human behaviour. Everything we do, we do to achieve something. Recognition not only releases oxytocin, which fosters trust and collaboration, but it also inspires others to aim for the same levels of excellence. Neuroscience shows that recognition needs to occur immediately after a goal has been achieved.
Zak, P. 2017, The neuroscience of trust, Harvard Business Review
Sinek, S. 2011, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
That’s why gamification is so important in the realization of this feature.
Now let’s start thinking for a solution!
Ideate
Quick brainstorming
Based on the talks I had with my colleagues I came to the conclusion that Teams shouldn’t be just an eco-friendly based feature.
I mean…
of course it will contains CO2-free challenges, but not only…
Ok, but WHY?
Because presenting it as an eco-friendly based feature only, would exclude regardless a huge part of the audience. Lot of people would consider it only a feature for a specific niche and they would probably not use it.
But
Launching it as a feature which allows people to have fun competing in different challenges would reach more users and so make more awareness.
Therefore
There will be a library of challenges divided by categories; one of them, maybe the first item of the list, will be “eco-friendly” challenges.
Why Apple Activity?
I searched on the marketplace the right app which would have hosted my feature. Activity, Nike+ Run Club, Strava, Runkeeper, Runtastic, etc.
At the end, after a strict selection, I choose Activity app from Apple because it is the best where I can add the feature: it’s an app for everyone, not a fitness/workout-based app and not a pro sport-based app.
It is also one of the most common used and it’s already installed in WatchOS.
That means that there’s no need to advertise the app and convince users to download it because they already know and use it.
Scenario
Peter is a team manager, every day he manages 4 people. They are the design team in a web agency. Peter cares a lot about the planet health; when he discovers Teams he realises he can involve his colleagues by challenge them to one of the available eco-friendly challenges.
Probably at the very beginning someone may not be interested, but thanks to the gamification logic behind the feature, they will start liking the idea to compete and try to achieve a common goal.
User Flows
This is a series of steps that users go through to complete a specific task. Here I show how team creator and team member would interact with the feature to achieve their primary goals: create a team, send invitations and join a team.
Site Map
After I defined main user flows and features I was able to build the sitemap:
Design
Wireframe
To create existing and new components I followed the WatchOS Guidelines. The real creative challenge was to combine those components to get an ordered, clean and intuitive UI.
Here I show again the primary flows, but this time more defined thanks to the wireframe stage:
Team Dashboard allows the user to manage and control different areas.
He can check all the progress about the challenge, team standings and awards board. Moreover he can edit the challenge settings or add a new one with the same team.
Visual Design & Hi-Fi Mockups
My intention was to let the users know that they are jumping into a different section of Activity app giving it its own identity:
Team Creation Prototype
Finally the challenge is ON!
Now we have to keep the players motivated. That’s why Teams will send them weekly notification about their progress, the team standings, etc.
Conclusion & Learnings
It’s been an interesting journey, short but intensive. I would have liked to cover more aspects of the process, especially in the analysis and test phases. But the available time was not enough: I mastered the challenge in 7 days, spending 1–2 hours a day (as suggested). However, I’m truly satisfied about the final result and the huge amount of things I’ve learned. This was my first case study and doing it in 7 days was tough and amazing.
Since I’m used to work in a team, facing this challenge alone allowed me to take care of multiple stages of the design process and that was one of the best way to understand it.
Final result
After passing the first stage (into the accepted works list), my case study has been judged by managers and product designers from the best companies in the world.
The jury have been evaluated all the case studies by three criteria:
- Quality of work
- Potential impact
- Real application
After all is said and done… my case study reached the 13th position.
The followings are personal feedback from some of the jury members about my work:
“ Good visual quality and completeness. Setup of challenges could use a phone app for picking names from contacts or other apps to make it more comfortable. This would allow the watch to be a monitoring and notifications-focused experience. ”
Vitorio Benedetti — Product Design Manager at Facebook
“ Great job identifying the nuanced user need around pairing up as a team to achieve emission control. The approach is very user-centric, vs trying to hit a bunch of bullet points for the sake of doing research. This project gets into how social proofing influences user behaviour, and I’d love to see more explorations around that aspect. Hope Apple could adopt your designs soon! ”
Yao Shi — Product Designer at Uber
“ Very comprehensive and detailed designs, both interaction and visual. ”
David Teodorescu — Senior Product Designer at Fitbit
“ Amazing work! I would love to see this app live. Did you think of making this app? May be team up with developers and make it real. ”
Bogdan Lev — Founder of productdesign.tips
