Work Buddy

a behavioral tracking desktop app to support user postural stability, to help people who primarily work on the computer maintain good posture and take breaks in between for long-term health benefits. ‍

Role:
UX designer
UX researcher

Team:
4 HCI master's students @ Gatech

Methods:
‍Contextual inquiry
Prototyping
Usability testing
Data analysis

Tools:
Figma
Qualtrics
Tableau
Miro

01. Overview

Problem Space

Focus on the postural problem of people who use computer

Computers have become the primary equipment for many people to work, communicate, and entertain, and people spend more time sitting in front of the computer nowadays than in the past. Asa result, it raises the problem of physical position and postural stability while interacting with computers.

Problem Statement

“How to help people maintain good posture when they are working on computers to improve long-term health?”

Solution

Design a behavioral tracking and intervention app with a ‘desktop pet’ named Work Buddy
The product optimizes people's posture, reminds users to take a break, and educates them about good posture and stretching techniques.

Set up Work Buddy

Users can turn on and off Work Buddy on the home page and navigate between the home screen and Work Buddy on their devices to optimize user experience.

Initiate break reminders

Users can create break reminders based on their schedule, and the system would activate Work Buddy and remind users to take break in between.  

Learn good posture and stretch

The system contains a library of posture and stretch knowledge for users to explore and learn about proper posture and methods to relieve bodily pain.

02. Research

User Research

We came to a realization of common postural problems that we all faced after studying on computers for a long period of time. We began with a vague idea of helping people, especially those working primarily from home, maintain good sitting posture and prevent bodily discomfort.

To explore the problem space and understand user behavior of interest from various perspectives, we determined to conduct 4 user research methods: exploratory research, public observation, interview, and survey.
Discovery
literature reviews and study of existing systems
Public Observation
10.8-hours observation session at 3 different public spaces
Interview
40+ interview questions, 4 participants, affinity mapping 200+ data
Survey
online survey, 40+ responses, and qualitative data analysis on Tableau

Key Research Findings

Although we employed 4 different research methods to collect data, we discovered many similarities and common interests in the different sets of research data. We summarized them into 5 high-level key research findings that helped develop our design solutions in the next phase.
01. Feel bodily pain across categories
02. Lack knowledge of good posture
03. Prefer to change positions while working
04. Focus hard on work leading to poorer posture
05. Have mixed satisfaction with ergonomic solutions

03. Ideation

Personas

What are our users?

To understand who we are designing for, we created 3 fictional characters to represent our potential users and generated personas for them based on the research data.

Empathy Maps

Understand user needs and pain points

Then, we wanted to understand how these 3 potential users feel about our product. We make 3 empathy maps that list their attitudes and behaviors in response to some postural challenges.

Design Requirements

01. Stretching

The design should encourage users to stretch to relieve pain and educate them how to stretch properly.

02. Educating

The design should educate users about the importance of sitting with good posture.

03. Adjusting postures

The design should educate users about the importance of sitting with good posture.

04. Taking Breaks

The design should remind users to take breaks in between work in a non-intrusive way.

05. Advising

The design should advise users in evaluating different seating options for working comfortably, based on the user’s specific needs and preferences.

Design Concepts

Ideate 2 design ideas and test their feasibility

We ideated 2 rivalry design solutions that address the 5 design requirements from different aspects and invited users to evaluate these two design concepts.

Posture Optimization App (left) is a mobile-based application integrating AR technology to help optimize sitting posture. Users can use phone cameras to scan a chair, and based on their input data, the system provides personalized instructions on how to sit on it.

Posture Reminder (right) is a desktop application with a screen accessory, consisted of both digital and physical forms. The computer camera is activated to track user posture, and the system can read the data and remind users to sit properly and take work breaks.  

Concept Testing

Evaluate 2 design ideas with users to select the overarching concept

We conducted a 60-minutes testing session with 4 potential users to evaluate the 2 design concepts. We presented the design to the users and asked 15 follow-up questions about their thoughts and reactions. Then, we summarized the feedback and turned it into a chart to compare these two design concepts and evaluate whether they meet the listed design solutions.
Overall, users expressed a positive attitude toward both design concepts. However, they found Posture Reminder more useful, because they believe the use cases of Posture Optimization App are limited to acquiring anew chair, which is not a frequent event for them. Further, based on their feedback, Posture Reminder does a better job of fulfilling the 5 design requirements. Therefore, we decided to move on with Posture Reminder and turned the latter design concept into a wireframe.

04. Design

Wireframe

Visualize the initial design and test its functionalities with users

Based on the feedback we received from the users, we turned Design Concept 2 into a wireframe and iterated the initial layout, key features, and user flow maps on Figma.

Wireframe Testing

Evaluate the wireframe with 4 UX professionals

Final Designs

Navigate from home screen to desktop reminder

Remind users to take breaks in between work

Track metrics of user postural progress

Educate users about good posture for work

Encourage users to stretch to relieve pain

Help users to adjust sitting posture with camera

05. Testing

User testing

Evaluate the design with users to get real-world feedback

To test the usability of the main features and collect user feedback, we conducted 3 testing methods and invited 9 participants from different fields (2 UX professionals, 1 physical therapist, and 6 target users). Each testing session was an hour long and taken placed both online and on-site, depending on the availability of the participants.
Testing Methods
3 methods: heuristics evaluation, think aloud, and subject-matter evaluation
Process
8 user tasks and high-fidelity mockup on Figma for participants to interact
Next Steps
6 areas for product iteration based on the testing results

06. Reflection

Lesson Learned

01. Tailored testing to user groups
We made the mistake of assuming everyone has prior knowledge of UX and usability testing, so I learned that customizing usability tests according to user groups can make the best out of the testing sessions.  
02. Users are the best teachers!
Our users helped us to investigate the problem deeper and gain valuable insights of the design. They were also able to offer ideas and resources that no one else would do.
03. Cross-functional collaboration
Teamwork is the key to success, and I was lucky to work with 3 amazing team members with different expertise. We were able to bring our skill sets to the project and worked on the areas that we were good at doing it.
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© 2023 by Siwei He