Week 5 • Exploring User Journeys

15 Feb. - 21 Feb. 2021

This past week I have been immersed in exploring how the user will flow from screen to screen along with what those screens will entail. I started by identifying and organizing activities that could be done post methodical movement. I organized these activities into how they would fit into the ETI framework. Activities are coming directly from PositivePsychology.com.

Organizing these activities into the ETI framework also directly correlated with the intensity of each activity. Going from just an easy, level 1 grounding experience in the beginning to a more probing processing session when reaching level 5. Users will have the ability to pick which level of intensity they feel ready for that day.

This is what led to my exploration into non-linear vs. linear user flows. I wanted to explore whether achieving levels would be a more intriguing and gamified experience for the user versus an experience that feels more open-ended and offers less satisfaction for "accomplishing" tasks.

Through this exploration, I realized that by visualizing the user flow as "linear", it could incorrectly structure the healing journey as linear. With this insight, I felt it was best to move forward with intensity levels for day-by-day use compared with levels of overall completion.

From here I created a high-level information architecture, shown below:

The tricky part here was narrowing down the amount of choices the user had to make so as not to immediately feel “bogged down” in the beginning. At first, I wanted the user to choose an emotion, a mantra, a level of intensity, and a movement. In the end, I was able to narrow it down to just an emotion and a level of intensity with the mantra and movement feeding automatically off those choices.

This week I am continuing with low-fidelity storyboarding of the user journey utilizing the personas (shown earlier) as starting points for specific journeys.

Week 04 • Methodical Movement

8 Feb. - 14 Jan. 2021

This past week was another large milestone – I was able to narrow my brainstorm ideations down to a final direction. I am so excited to move forward with a methodical movement + dance app in which processing a traumatic event can take place.

The idea behind Dala is as follows:

• The user enters Dala and is presented with an emotions wheel.

• The user picks an emotion that best describes their day and is presented with a list of mantras that correlate with that emotion.

• The user picks a mantra and is then presented with intensity describing the processing questions coming after the movement. These questions are categorized between grounding (vague questions) and intense (full processing activities).

• From here the user is brought to a dance move / walking / balancing routine that corresponds to their mantra and intensity decision.

• The user completes their 2 - 5 minute routine and is brought to an ending processing activity.

• Once complete, the user is able to see archived routines and processing activity answers to reflect if compelled. If not, the user is able to exit the app and return again another day.

This concept comes straight from my primary research of interviewing with users who experienced low childhood memory retention due to traumatic events. For all users, their caregivers were not attentive about their child's emotional states (i.e. “I wasn’t asked how I was feeling”, “having someone recognize what was happening to me”, “cared to ask”). In the end, not talking about what was going on was de-validating their reality and making it harder for them to process their trauma. This is what brought me to the conclusion of adding an emotion wheel; to give them a chance to collect themselves from the day and acknowledge the emotions they truly feel with validation from the app.

Along with the emotion wheel, I also took the idea of methodical movement directly from user interviews. In these interviews, users described doing simple, methodical activities like learning a language online or playing with legos as times where they could process and remember events. When seeing this show up in my research, I knew it was an intriguing idea that had not fully been explored before and made me want to incorporate this into a concept.

"Movement is a great antidote to that freeze state. It gets us unstuck." - Joanna Ciolek

My primary research is backed by extensive secondary research calling methodical, rhythmic movement a type of mediation; allowing the brain to go back and process memories. Many explain how trauma-informed movement is able to complement traditional trauma therapy.

One article, written by Maggie Fazeli Fard, explains, "The goal of trauma-informed movement is not to release trauma or cure it. Instead, a targeted practice is designed to help people rebuild their body awareness, teach them that they have choices for that body, and allow them to make a choice that is right for them."

This “can be extremely important when endeavoring to resolve trauma,” writes body-psychotherapist Rothschild. “It is the information from the senses that the amygdala [which is responsible for emotions, survival, and memory] uses to determine whether an environment is safe or dangerous and how to respond.”

Methodical movement can include things like dancing, balancing, walking, and more. With Dala focusing on these movements, my goal is to provide a space where processing can be a fun, grounding, and learning experience all packed into one.

From here, I will move onto figuring out user journeys and tasks throughout the app. Is it an experience where steps can be quantified and achieved? Can a step be fully completed without needing to be revisited? Will the user benefit from forms of gamification? And so on, more on this next week!

Week 03 • Brainstorming

1 Feb. - 7 Feb. 2021

This past week felt like a huge milestone – I officially see myself moving from research to ideation. It is so satisfying to start brainstorming and putting all the ideas wrapped up in my head down on paper. I created the best foundation in my research and feel ready to start sketching + connect ideas.

To better understand my user before brainstorming, I created 3 separate personas. They describe different areas of traumatic experiences and introductions to Dala.

During some of my more recent secondary research, I found amazing graphics explaining the framework of trauma integration. These graphics became a map of sorts for all of the research I had gathered the past 6 months. I was able to take this framework and divide what I had read and heard in interviews / surveys into specific categories. Once there, it was easy to see how each step of the process was connected (i.e. grounding must be down before any type of processing) and how everything I had learned was essential to integration in its own way.

With that being said, my solution can't focus on all techniques and practices. It is only meant to be a piece of the puzzle and should never replace professional work + therapy. But, the categories were helpful in brainstorming for select regions; uncovering solutions through narrowing the premise.

After all of this, I was able to come up with five outlines for potential solutions. This was presented to small groups where I was given great feedback on direction and scope.

With all of my comments from this past week, I plan on going back to the drawing board and integrating key points that I heard from peers. For next week, my goal is to have a fully-flushed out concept – then visualizing begins, yahoo!