Smiling Mind UX Research
BRIEF
Research the needs of advanced mindfulness and meditation practitioners and design a feature add‑on that fulfils those needs and encourages usage and retention.
CLIENT
Smiling Mind, an Australian Not‑For‑Profit Mindfulness and Meditation app, developed by psychologists and educators.
PROBLEM
While Smiling Mind is currently popular with beginner meditators, they had noticed a drop-off of users at more advanced levels.
They knew anecdotally that users were switching to other apps or self‑guided meditation.
Smiling Mind were interested in exploring how their app can better support the needs of more advanced users, ultimately encouraging further usage and engagement of the app with this audience, and creating brand advocates.
My Research Methodology
After an initial stakeholder interview to establish the business challenge and goals, I began my one-on-one interviews with customers.
As we didn't have access to the app's user database to recruit participants from, I reached out through my local networks in order to find participants. My screening criteria zoomed in on adults over 18, living in Australia, who were familiar with Smiling Mind, and who considered themselves to be "advanced" meditation practitioners.
My core research objectives:
• Define the meaning of an “advanced practitioner”.
• Understand how users have self-identified, and how these definitions overlap with, but also differ from one another.
• Identify Advanced Users’ Goals & Desires for their mindfulness practice.
• Identify Advanced Users’ Unmet Felt Needs/Pains with their mindfulness practice.
• Explore what Advanced Users want in a mindfulness app and how Smiling Mind can support them ongoing.
I recruited and interviewed six participants, made up of:
• Five participants over 45; one participant who was 32
• Five female participants; one male
• Five participants who had used the Smiling Mind app previously but had defected to other apps or self-guided meditation.
While they all disliked the ranking system and spoke of a journey of continuous improvement and learning, half of the participants considered themselves advanced mindfulness practitioners - the other half considered themselves intermediate.
Following my interviews, I used affinity mapping to find key themes and trends across the demographics. Through empathy mapping and personas, I was able to further explore these trends, while also highlighting points of difference, depending on the user's motivations, goals and pain-points. From this, I presented four key areas of interest to explore further.
Key Findings
Advanced users feel self-sufficient in their day to day meditative practice. To these users, an app isn’t necessary to support them through a meditation session.
Advanced users would value:
• Further learning, in order to grow their understanding of meditation and its benefits.
• Acute stress support, as during times of acute stress or major life change, they may struggle to self-regulate or find that their existing practice isn’t working for them.
• Flexibility and choice, to allow them to practice meditation how they would prefer.
• Progress tracking, to help them embed their meditative practice into their day to day lives.
Research output artefacts
Empathy Map, to understand the users and the context surrounding them
Personas, to help us empathise with the different types of users
Pains and Gains, to understand the users' frustrations, struggles, hopes and goals
User Journey Map, with UX Opportunity highlighted, to help us understand their thoughts and goals at every step of the process
UX Opportunity
With a more thorough insight into the Advanced Users' needs and desires, as well as the business's requirements, I was able to map out the overall UX Opportunity.
Minimum viable experienced (user-focussed)
Must Haves
• Meditations for stress support
• Easy access to a crisis relief meditation
• Clear navigation
• Trustworthy content
• Visually appealing
• Simple language
• Less guided meditations
Nice to Haves
• Additional reading material
• Further learning opportunities
• Progress tracking
• Recommendations for further learning
Early Ideation
Next, I began early ideation, through Unmet Felt Needs, Hypotheses and How Might We statements.
At this point of my process, I met with our business stakeholder to present the UX Research. The Smiling Mind representative was very receptive to my research and agreed with many of my findings, based on anecdotal feedback that they had received.
After this meeting, I moved into further ideation and prototyping, explored here.
