UX Case Study- Social Psychology
Isha Vithalani
Harsha Shilwant
INTRODUCTION
PROJECT BRIEF
Headspace is a mindfulness app with an interesting interface that takes the seriousness and intimidation out of meditation. The app was co-founded by Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk who narrates a majority of the guided meditations.
According to Headspace, meditation is like exercise for the brain. Through meditation, we can build up areas of our brain and actually rewire it to enhance positive traits like focus and decision making and diminish the less positive ones like fear and stress. Most importantly, this means there is a possibility to change your brain for the better in a way that is long-lasting.
Team : Namrata Dharmadhikari, Harsha Shilwant, Isha Vithalani
Timeline : 4 weeks (April - May, 2021)
The objective was to study and understand the interplay of social and psychological factors influencing the design process of a chosen application and accordingly suggesting recommendations to enhance the user experience of the brand.
PROCESS FLOW
Introduction
Overview
History
How it Works
Social Cognition
Social Influence
Heuristics
Schemas
Strategies of Compliance
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Analysis Methods
Recommendations
Global Mindfulness App Marker
Headspace User Segmentation
Instagram Analysis
Competitors Analysis
Online User Survey
One - on - One Interviews
Personas
Empathy Mapping
User Experience Mapping
Representative Heuristics
The page that provides information about the premium version has an illustration of a long road through the meadows and towards the happy sun.
Availability Heuristics
Headspace had a ‘buddies’ section where the users can add their friends who use the app as well.
Person Schema
Headspace also checks in every month on their users. Users have to answer a total of 10 questions. The answers to these are recorded and future activities are suggested accrodingly.
Liking
User’s friends can also send them messges(templates) like ‘You’re doing great, get some headspace today’ to their friends.
Apart from that Headspace has a part called focus which has music playlists compiled by well known artists.
Scarcity
Deadline technique: Headspace provided 50% off on subscription on the occasion of their birthday month and hence stated that the offer wouldn’t stand after that month.
Playing hard to get: Headspace in the beginning provides only a limited amount of courses and sessions which the users can use rest are locked and would be unlocked only after the users subscribe.
Social Proof
Users can share their exact streak count of how many times they’ve meditated in a row to other people through social media..
Another strategy that Headspace uses is to provide statistics and data based on their own research by professionals in the field about the effectiveness of the application on users.
SOCIAL COGNITION
Social cognition studies the way in which people process, store and apply information about other prople and social situations. It is the manner in which we interpret, analyse, remember and use information about the social world.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
Social influence is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs or behavior are modified by the presence or action of others. Four areas of social influence are conformity, compliance and obedience, and minority influence.
Namrata Dharmadhikari
COMPETITORS ANALYSIS
Perceptual mapping :
Meditation and more
Only Meditation
Calming + stress relief
Reflection + insights
Insight timer
Simple habit
Omvana
Soulvana
Inner hour
Meditopia
Calm
Dhyana
Headspace
Sadhguru app
BIGGEST COMPETITOR FOR Heaspace CURRENTLY : CALM APP
Contains images
Contains Videos
90.2%
9.4%
Outdoor
Indoor
56.3%
43.7%
You can upgrade to Headspace Plus for $12.99 per month with a free 7-day trial, or get 14 days free with a $69.99 annual subscription.
With its fun, cheerful animations, Headspace has a completely different aesthetic from Calm. But like Calm, the Headspace app is visually appealing and easy to navigate.
Other important features that Headspace provides are:
Themed meditations: Headspace offers hundreds of guided meditations that cover things like cravings, finding focus, dealing with regret and difficult conversations, and even creative writing. You can access these as single meditations or grouped courses.
SOS section: This section offers meditations to help you manage intense experiences. Choose a guided or unguided meditation based on how much time you have, or browse tips and techniques to deepen your practice.
Mindfulness workouts: These focus on intention, awareness, stress relief, and much more. Performance mindset meditations for mental fitness are inspired by NBA and WNBA players.
Sleep section: Browse Sleepcasts (every day storytelling in a range of soothing voices), meditation and breathing techniques to wind down and prepare for sleep, or guided exercises if you find yourself waking up at night. Sleep music, soundscapes, and sleep radio nonstop, 8-hour mixes of sleep audio are also options.
If you choose to sign up for a 7-day trial, you’ll automatically be enrolled in Calm Premium, which costs $69.99 a year or $14.99 a month.
The app has a beautiful interface with calming, inspiring landscape imagery, and you can customize your dashboard with a scene that speaks to you.
Other important features that Calm provides are:
Daily Calm: These 10-minute guided meditations are related to different aspects of mindfulness, like anxiety, stress, and sleep, and serve as a great way to develop a regular practice.
Quick & Easy: This section offers a handful of short meditations, with options to calm anxiety or anger, heighten awareness, or deepen concentration.
Mental Fitness: This section offers different series’ on mindfulness. One option is led by basketball champion LeBron James. Another, called How to Meditate, is a simple 30-day program for beginning your practice.
Sleep Stories: These calming bedtime stories for adults feature some celeb narrators like Matthew McConaughey and Harry Styles. If you’d rather drift off to music, check out the Sleep Music feature.
Calm Masterclass: These audio programs are led by world-renowned mindfulness experts.
Headspace
Parameters
Subscription course packs
Overall application elements
Important features of the application
Share of Content(refers to percetange of videos and images the application contains).
Indoor/Outdoor split(refers to percetange of Indoor and outdoor sounds in the application).
Celebrities (Ones who are associated with Headspace ad Calm)
Calm
Contains images
Contains Videos
76%
24%
Outdoor
Indoor
49.1%
50.9%
John Legend
Jos Buttler
Kevin Hart
James Anderson
Mitchell Marsh
Narendra Modi
Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Harry Styles
Kevin Mayer
Lady Gaga
Donald Trump
Nicole Kidman
Kate Winslet
Priyanka Chopra
Nick Jonas
Lucy Liu
Keanu Reeves
Virat Kohli
Joe Biden
Salman Khan
Liam Payne
Mindy Kaling
PRIMARY DATA COLLECTION
Questionnaire Survey
An online survey was conducted and sent to the participants who have used Headspace atleast once. The main objective behind conducting the survey was to gain insights regarding the usage pattern of the users, how they percieved the application, their attitude regarding mindfulness and its techniques and understanding how they actuallly used the application.
We got a total of 30 responses from all participants of Indian origin out of which 19 were females and 11 males. Majority of the participants were individuals from age group 17-23 years (90%) , and only 6.7% from 10-16 years ,and 3% were 45 and above. Apart from these majority of the users were students(96.7%) and others were individuals working in the service sector(3.3%).
A few insightful results that from the survey are as follows :
Any three words or emotions that first come to your mind when you think about the Headspace app?
“Sleep, calmness, peace”
“Clean, relaxing, mindful”
“SOS, tranquil, easy”
“Calm, silence, deep breaths”
“Meditation, mindfulness, relaxation”
“Calming, Soothing”
“Peace”
“Beautiful UI gosh I love it so much”
How did you first feel when you saw that only a few sessions / courses were unlocked?
“I was heartbroken. The best sessions that i was reallly looking forward to were all paid and the very basic ones were free”
“Doesn't effect me much as I know it just a temporary solution and I am using it to just get form a habit of meditating”
“I was about to uninstall the app because I thought it was completely paid , but later on when i found out i can have regular guidance , i kept it.”
“It was a little disappointing but I was pretty okay w paying for subscriptions if it helped me.”
“Felt strange. You achieve the goal of joining the app only if you complete all the sessions. Having half of sessions paid once you've started for free is more of a business strategy but this might create a negative impact on the user.”
For what purpose did you first start using the application?
Getting started with meditation
To relieve stress and anxiety
To deal with loneliness
Improve quality of sleep
To boost self esteem
To start practicing mindfulness
Other
0
10
15
15
16
2
1
14
10
3
20
5
Most commonly used features in the application
Meditate
The buddy feature
Sleep
Move(Workout)
Focus
Short expert guidance videos
Group meditation
Activities for the day
Statistics
Journey and monthly check-in
Today’s mindful moment
Pop up notifications of their quotes, diversity of categories and effectiveness of the sessions
0
What feature did you expect in the application but you couldn't find?
“I didn't expect to be paying once I downloaded the app”
“Would like to see them using more kinds of therapy techniques”
“Free lessons ”
“App doesn’t guide what’s next after basics ”
“A therepeutic music feature maybe, music helps me relax well and after watching the Netflix show about headspace I thought it might have something similar”
“More visualisation meditations.The meditations in the app are outdated for the chaotic city life we live in ”
“Podcasts”
“maybe like a more student focused category ”
Is the application helping you to achieve your goals?
60%
30%
10%
yes
No
Maybe
Scenario
TOUCHPOINTS
COMES ACROSS HEADSPACE
GETTING STARTED
UNSUBSCRIBED USAGE
SUBSCRIBED USAGE
AFTER ONE MONTH
IDEAS FOR
IMPROVEMENT
THINKING &
FEELING
Goals
The person is feeling very low and experiencing frequest high levels of stress and anxiety. However he does not wish to go to a counsellor for it. While searching for online alternatives he comes across Headspace.
Relieve his stress levels and get back on track.
Get started with and increase his knowledge about mindfulness.
While searching for an online session related to therapy or meditation and mental wellbeing, the user came across advertisements about Headspace on different platforms.
Watched a documentary of Headspace on Netflix.
Celebrity promoting the app on social media.
Downloaded the application to try it out.
Feeling stressed and anxious
Will I even find a suitable online session instead of therapy
How much can I trust Headspace.
Since this celebrity is promoting, lets atleast give it a try.
Finding more celebrities related to India, to appeal to and create a sense of trust in the Indian audience.
Onboarding questions.
What’s on your mind? (choose a category eg; Managing everyday anxiety and stress)
Subscription model information shown; monthly and annual with either first 7 or 14 days free.
Initial breathing exercise with 5 breaths.
How are you feeling now? (choose your current condition like feeling relaxed, tense or very tense and such)
Exploring the application.
Reflecting on your reason to join headspace
Why can’t I select multiple options?
I’ll only try the free version first, I don’t want to spend much on a new app.
Should I do the breathing exercise with the application? Why are they making me do this now? What will happen next?
Whatever I select now, will it affect my next options?
Does this app even have anything unlocked?
User should be able to select multiple options for the onboarding questions.
The onboarding could also include more personalised questions and options to set up a preferred avatar.
Have an option to set up their own fancy names.
Choosing the filter that suits your mood the best from the instant suggestions.
Sharing the buddy link and adding friends.
Start with the meditate feature starting with basics course or searching courses which are unlocked for the non-subscribed version.
Exploring the other features through unlocked sessions only.
I like the filters. But what if I want to stay to stay calm and focused both? Why are there sessions only for maximum 20 minutes?
It is showing me suggestions but they are all locked except one.
Can I chat through the buddy link? I like the badges, they are cute!
This guy’s voice is calm and soothing, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do when he is not speaking anything.
The app should have more unlocked features to help the user adapt to them more efficiently.
The ongoing courses of users should be available on the homepage itself. They should not have to go searching for them again.
Additional Indian language hindi should be incorporated to target a larger Indian audience.
The buddy feature should have more options to interact with others.
Purchasing the premium monthly version.
Exploring all new unlocked headspace libraries.
Practising the mindfulness activities regularly.
Use the check-in feature.
Maintaining daily streaks.
Attending group meditations.
Lets try out the locked features only for a month for now.
Let me try out different courses now.
Ohh this is nice, but I dont want to keep on repeating it, lets try something different.
This check-in actually reminded me of my progress and what I should focus on next.
I don’t want to miss a day in between.
Can’t figure out if this group meditation is still going on or not.
In the ongoing course, users should be able to view sessions towards the end of the course.
Adding more customisable nature related sounds during guided meditation.
There can be another feature in the app where users can write in a journal about their daily experiences.
The app should also have a dedicated section to help in covid times.
Have no disturbance during the meditation.
Check our journey and statistics.
Get the annual subscription.
Get the monthly subscription again.
Go back to the unsubscribed version.
Delete the application.
The app was great, I tried all I could, but just not worth the amount.
This is not motivating me enough to continue my practice daily. I need a push to get me going.
I’m bored of repeating the same sessions again.
I’m not using anything other than meditate and sleep, so not really willing to pay for these limited things.
The app can have family/ friends plans that a group of 4-5 people can purchase and use together.
Having mini games as a break, to keep the users engaged to the app.
Provide motivation to the users to practice the activities daily in the form of rewards.
Have more core meditation techniques like different types of visualisation techniques, Chakra meditation etc.
USER EXPERIENCE MAPPING
Personalization
Adding Calming Music of User’s Choice in the Background
Flexibility in Selecting Duration for Meditation
Five Minute Journaling and progress tracking
Group Interactions
Podcasts and Informative Blog Articles.
RECOMMENDATIONS
KEY LEARNINGS
A lot of users mentioned the need for the app to be more inclusive. The language options offered by the app currently are limited to five foreign languages. Headspace can start with adding a few narrators with Indian English accent. Moving forward, make the content available in official languages of India (like Hindi) and other countries too in a gradual manner. This will increase the user base by a huge margin and make the users of various age groups and backgrounds more comfortable with using it.
Giving the users options to choose their own avatars for the display. They can either upload a picture from their gallery or choose a headspace avatar from the app. This personalisation will give the users the feeling of familiarity. You can choose a unique headspace username as well, instead of your own.
Music is a very integral part in most of our lives and we see many taking refuge in music when facing any discomfort / difficulty (minor or major).
The guided meditations lack ambient sounds, making some users uncomfortable and less focused. Adding meditative sounds can enhance concentration, signal session progress, and provide a more immersive and relaxing experience.
For this purpose, we recommend making available a comprehensive list of sounds for the users to add. They can choose their guided meditations to be empty without any sounds, or choose their favourite sounds to play in the background during the session. They can select more than one sound to play simultaneously to add to the experience. Examples of different sounds include, beach, night, forest, campfire, journey sounds and so on.
Apart from the additions of sounds, giving the users flexibility and choice in selecting the duration for which they wish to meditate is needed. As of now, the users have limited time options to choose from - 3 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins. Instead, the user can feed their own duration (ranging from 3-60 minutes) according to their practice and need. This small change will help increase user satisfaction by a considerable level.
Introduce 5-minute journaling prompts to encourage mindfulness and track progress.
Morning prompts: "How are you feeling today?", "Three things you're grateful for", "What will I do to make today better?", and "Daily affirmations".
Evening prompts: "Highlights of the day", "How could I have made today better?".
Provide sentence starters and suggestions (e.g., "I saw a...", "Today, at work...") to make journaling simple and engaging.
Summarise user progress to showcase personal growth and Headspace's impact.
Podcasts and informative blog articles are one of the consistent demands that we recieved from many users. They also claimed that their usage time would increase drastically if it was provided by the application. This will also help them make informed desicions about practicing meditations regularly and be more aware of their actions and consequences.
Podcasts and blog articles written by renowned personalities in the field of mindfulness, explaining various aspects, areas, perspectives of this vast subject is going to be a heavy differentiator and valuable addition to the app content.
We learned about various concepts of social psychology like social inlfuence and cognition which helped us gain in-depth understanding of the factors that influence user’s decision making and how these can be used in the application to gain user’s attention, make valuable additions and increase their overall usage.
We also learned how to conduct remote interviews. Although, a humble number of participants were interviewed, we were able to gather significant number of insights.
We got to study the domain of mindfulness and also collected demographic data which helped us gain an understanding about the market conditions. We learned how we can interpret this data to gain further insights about the audience psyche regarding Headspace and its competitors.
This was a different approach to the design process, it gave us an opportunity to learn to look at user experiences in new light. Moving further, we would integrate these learnings in our upcoming projects.
Expand the current buddy feature to allow free-form messaging, enabling clearer communication beyond template-based messages.
Introduce group messaging to let users form groups, share messages collectively, and motivate each other.
Add the ability for group participants to attend sessions together, such as group meditation, fostering a sense of community.
Priya Gulmarg
Buddies
Buddies
Tanya Mishra
Stats
Journey
Tap on avatar to edit
Could use a nudge
EDIT
Anandi Joshi
Could use a nudge
Share buddy link
Priya Gulmarg
Buddies
Buddies
Tanya Mishra
Stats
Journey
Tap on avatar to edit
Could use a nudge
EDIT
Anandi Joshi
Could use a nudge
Share buddy link
Tap on avatar to edit
Choose your own image from gallery
Priya Gulmarg
Buddies
Buddies
Tanya Mishra
Stats
Journey
Tap on avatar to edit
Could use a nudge
EDIT
Anandi Joshi
Could use a nudge
Share buddy link
Tap on avatar to edit
Choose your own image from gallery
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Choose your sounds
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vinrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
Only Narrators voice
5 min
10 min
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Choose your sounds
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vinrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
5 min
10 min
Beach sounds
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vinrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
Only Narrators voice
5 min
10 min
Beach sounds
Forest sounds
Choose your sounds
Night sounds
Campfire sounds
Journey sounds
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
You can now try the new sounds feature for your guided meditation
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vibrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
5 min
Add your time
10 min
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vibrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
5 min
Add your time
10 min
Add your time
10 min
Save
10 mins
60 mins
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vibrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
5 min
10 min
45 min
Basics
Session 1
00:00
45:00
Basics
Session 1
00:00
11:30
Choose a length
Closed captions
Haptic assistance
Recieve a series of gentle haptics vibrations that let you know when its time to look at your device. Closed captions must be on in order to use
3 min
5 min
Add your time
10 min
Add your time
40 min
10 mins
60 mins
Save
Priya Gulmarg
Buddies
Stats
Journey
Tap on avatar to edit
Do a monthly check-in
2
Total Enteries
1
Current Streak
4
Days
Journaling
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