Desk Buddy — A UX Case Study
UW HCDE 518 Autumn 2024
Overview
Desk Buddy explores the question: How might we create a user-friendly mobile solution that helps university students cope with anxiety in a time-constrained, high-stress environment? During an intensive 8-week design sprint, this question was explored, iterated on, and developed into the final solution.
Process
The course HCDE 518 User-Centered Design explores the user-centered design paradigm from a broad perspective, emphasizing how user research and prototype assessment can be integrated into different phases of the design process. Students learned to think like a user-centered designer and carry out activities that are key to user-centered design. Our team, Anxious Ninjas, followed the typical design thinking process: define → analyze → ideate → prototype → test.
We also considered the Double Diamond framework. The Four D’s of the Double Diamond are Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).
With team members both from UX and non-UX backgrounds, learning and following the Design Thinking process helped to ensure that the group did not rush to solutioning or delivery before the problem space had been defined and validated.
Research Plan
Users and Stakeholders
The primary users for our research are university students who are experiencing mild to moderate daily anxiety. We sought learnings and insights from a range of students, looking across ages, gender, majors, year of study, and degree. We focused on findings from students who reported elevated scores for current levels of anxiety.
Other stakeholders we identified include loved ones, mental health professionals, and academic institutions that may be invested in tools that could help manage the collective problem of anxiety on campus.
Design Question
Our group built our research plan around the original design question:
How might we create a non-invasive and user-friendly tool that helps individuals recognize and manage daily anxiety through personalized coping techniques?
Based on the user research insights that follow, we refined it in the following way:
How might we create a user-friendly mobile solution that helps students cope with anxiety in a time-constrained, high-stress environment through encouraging them to share negative feelings and offering real-time suggestions?
In the refined design question, we shifted focus from “help students realize and manage” to “a time-constrained, high-stress environment”, as the former barrier of realizing anxiety in time was less significant than the stressful environment and time constraints which was supported by the survey. We also specified that the tool would be a mobile solution to lower entry barriers and allow fractured time usage. We replaced “personalized coping strategies” with “ encouraging them to share negative feelings and offering real-time suggestions”, emphasizing on the most effective coping strategies we find in the user research and will focus on.
Research Question
Our research questions explored the following key areas:
- Triggers of Anxiety
- Physical and Emotional Symptoms
- Impact on Daily Functioning
- Openness and Support
- Coping Strategies
- Tool Preferences
For the research methods for understanding users, our group chose to focus on Surveys, Interviews, and Contextual Inquiry.
Research Insights
We received 28 valid responses from the survey questionnaire. For the results, see Appendix 2. 85.7% of the respondents were female and 82.1% were graduate students. 89.3% of students reported mid to high levels of anxiety (Level 3 to 5 on the 1–5 scale), and the mean anxiety level was 3.5.
From the survey, the most common triggers of anxiety include academic pressure (85.7%), deadlines (82.1%), socializing (78.6%), and job seeking (75%). Apart from these leading triggers, people may feel anxious for diverse reasons like financial issues, conflicts with people, and public speaking. Students experience a wide range of different physical and emotional symptoms, with increased heart rate being the most common physical reaction (67.9%) and feeling overwhelmed the most common emotional change (82.1%). Anxiety affects students’ ability to get through a normal day in multiple ways, including work efficiency (75%), concentration (75%), social ability (71.4%), and procrastination (64.3%).
Students report different levels of openness with who they are willing to share their anxieties, yet generally, talking to someone you trust is recognized as helpful (4.07/5). Other helpful coping strategies include going outdoors (3.89/5), doing things you like (3.79/5), having fun with friends (3.68/5), and getting enough sleep (3.68/5) . Reflection and journaling are less effective than talking or social activities. Most students (67.9%) have not tried any mental health apps. Stressful environments (64.3%) and time constraints (53.6%) are the top 2 reported barriers to properly manage anxiety, followed by hard to realize anxiety in time (35.7%), no one to talk to (32.1%), money (25%), and stigma (21.4%).
To analyze patterns in qualitative findings, we adopted Affinity Mapping to group the insights from our interviews and contextual inquiries, organizing them into grouping around triggers, symptoms, impact, sharing, coping, and design suggestions. We found that it is typical for students to report that they would be affected by multiple triggers of anxiety concurrently, experiencing diverse physical and emotional changes.
From this research, we realized the following:
- Anxiety is a common experience triggered by factors they may not even recognize.
- Most of the time anxiety is around academics and the desk where they work.
- Sharing experiences with others that can empathize and give you emotional support is recognized as a helpful strategy.
- Students need real-time suggestions based on varying symptoms, with a focus on improving work efficiency and solving procrastination.
Design Ideation
Design Requirements
Based on findings from the user research, we brainstormed and synthesized the design requirements for this project:
- The solution should be configurable to various anxiety triggers, which can be very different across individuals.
- The solution should offer real-time suggestions of monitoring anxiety based on symptoms, with a focus on improving work efficiency and solving procrastination.
- The solution should provide positive emotional support (like celebrating positive achievements and milestones), as students are generally facing a stressful environment and feeling overwhelmed.
- The solution should be able to encourage users to share negative thoughts by providing sympathetic responses or helping users connect to their inner circle or loved ones, as sharing experiences is recognized as a helpful strategy.
- The solution should work on a mobile device to allow people to use the tool at fractured time, as one major challenge of coping anxiety is time constraints.
Personas
Considering that students would have different personas, we created two main personas to guide our ideation:
- Guarded Guru: a student who prefer to deal with anxiety on their own
- Sharing Sage: a student who prefers talking to people, understanding that those people still need to be close enough to understand what they are going through
Having each of these personas helped to ensure that the ideation would not exclude certain students from the solution that are especially prone to sharing more or less.
Sketching
For our sketching project, we conducted a brainstorming ideation session where our team brainstormed and sketched as many ideas as possible that could meet our users needs. Every group member generated at least 6 sketches and from there, we critiqued and filtered the sketches. We sorted the sketches into piles using affinity mapping to group ideas that go together.
Through ranking the piles based from the most promising to least promising, our group was able to choose the 3 most promising ideas: an anxiety support group activity (card game), a wearable connected necklace, and a friendly connected desk buddy. For each of these three ideas, we re-sketched the idea more neatly. Below are the sketches along with a short statement explaining each idea.
- Anxiety Support Group Activity (Card Game): Our user research surfaced that individuals facing anxiety are seeking people they can share with as a way of coping. Rather than taking an app-based digital approach, a physical anxiety support group activity ensures that people can cope with other people, rather than an app. This game would be multiplayer and emphasizes sharing and coping categories to make the exercise more fun and relatable.
- Wearable Connected Necklace: Our user research revealed that students facing anxiety wanted to build awareness of their anxiety throughout their day to day. They want mobile solutions but don’t necessarily want to have to remember to open an app on their phone. That is why we are proposing a wearable connected necklace. Because a necklace is close to the heart, it is physically and symbolically significant for tracking well-being and triggers of anxiety. The proposed wearable device would monitor heart rate, and also have visual cues when deep breathing or breaks might be helpful, as well as the ability to use those visual cues for deep breathing guides.
- Friendly Connected Desk Buddy: Students reported that the tasks that cause anxiety are around academics and the desk where they work. A number of our initial sketches reflected the desires of students to have a companion that might notice when they get anxious. This idea for a connected desk buddy is focused on creating a safe space in the working environment. There would be a variety of physical animals to pick that have different profiles based on emotional representations, triggers, and coping mechanisms. These physical buddies would have digital representations for a connected phone app.
Preliminary Design
We shortlisted the Desk Buddy because of how well it tied with our research insights:
- An empathetic system that encourages sharing and builds positive reinforcement
- Observes and intervenes timely so that anxiety can be resolved in time
- Offers personalization to diverse patterns of anxiety among users
- Accessible throughout the day as the student navigates different environments
- Helps break the stigma around anxiety
We were able to incorporate aspects of our other top ideas such as the monitoring from the Wearable Connected Necklace and the community focus from the Anxiety Support Group Activity (Card Game).
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Settling the design question and goals led to the creation of the Desk Buddy. The concept for the final design — A fluffy handheld friend sitting on your desk or portable in hand — was proposed at this stage.
Usability Testing
Our usability testing and research plan started with informal testing with lo-fi prototypes and a rough task list for participants. These prototypes built onto key scenarios the team identified as being important as user flows for the Desk Buddy.
Through multiple rounds of testing, we were able to improve both the test scenarios and fidelity of the prototype. Our usability testing and research plan started with informal testing with lo-fi prototypes and a rough task list for participants. We started with this task list and used a horizontal prototype at this stage. The prototype at that stage lacked interactivity but modeled key capabilities of the app and desk buddy. Our desk buddy at this stage was a placeholder object.
Overall, participants understood the purpose for each feature but there was a general curiosity about how each feature worked that was not clarified by the existing prototype. There were some notable usability issues that the team addressed before a second round.
After informal testing, we conducted formal usability testing with 3 participants using our improved mid-fi prototype and refined task lists. We introduced a physical prototype for the Desk Buddy that replaced the placeholders used earlier in testing, resembling a bear and constructed with felt to be soft to the touch. We documented our insights from each recorded session.
In terms of general feedback, there were positive takeaways. Overall, participants continued to understand the purpose for each feature as they did in the prior round of testing. Users appreciated the app’s insights, ability to interpret long-term trends, and actionable suggestions like taking walks or guided breathing exercises. The buddy’s guided responses were helpful for breaking down tasks and managing anxiety. The flat design of the app was well-received.
The SUS (System Usability Scale) survey score was computed from our testers to be 58.33, a marginal score indicating large space for improvement. General challenges included the onboarding process with confusing placeholder text, unclear navigation and poor organization of triggers and coping strategies, a need for more context in sharing settings and better calibration of anxiety levels, and feeling that the buddy’s responses could sometimes feel repetitive and invasive.
Our highest priorities were to improve the quality of both physical and digital prototypes. As well as further highlight the role of the physical buddy in our prototype. For example, instead of users thinking that they can use the app for chats with the buddy, we made pushed for the app to make it very clear that it is used for viewing the chat history, not initiating there.
Final Design: Desk Buddy
Final Prototype
After incorporating our iterations, our “final” interactive digital prototype for the desk buddy app followed similar flows to before but resolves the most critical usability issues. Our custom felt constructed prototype continued to serve as the model for our physical desk buddy. We landed on the following key design aspects for the Desk Buddy.
🐻 Desk Buddy
A fluffy handheld friend with you. Sitting on your desk or portable in hand, it is always there to listen, watch, and convey emotions or nudges. There are a variety of physical animals to pick as buddies.
📱 Connected Phone App
The hub for picking your buddy, getting detailed insights or guidance, and connecting with friends and communities.
🎤 Final Showcase
We showcased this final prototype to the broader class, marking an important presentation milestone for the team but also serving as another feedback round to help iterate on our solution.
Final Design
Capped off with the final showcase, we took away valuable feedback and insights from the usability testing and prototype iterations we performed. We learned the importance for our team to consider how we can make the app feel like an extension of the desk buddy and not the other way around. Along the way, we appreciated the usability feedback we received and learned how to improve the fidelity of our prototypes.
We continued to refine both digital and physical aspects of the product experience to ensure that we did the concept justice and that users understand how a desk buddy may be the ideal trusted solution for them to help regulate anxiety. For the final physical design, our focus was balancing functionality with aesthetics, disguising observation tech as natural features of the buddy such as the cameras, microphone, and speakers.
For the final digital designs, we built and leveraged a Desk Buddy Design System (DBDS) based on the Material 3 Design Kit, capturing important design elements including typography, color, spacing & padding, logo, buddies, and emotion labels.
With DBDS, we were able to increase the fidelity of our digital designs and start to see the solution really come to life. The examples below showcase a few of our final digital designs for the configuration onboarding flow for setting up a buddy, the home and chats flow for conducting a conversation, the detection flow when the buddy is observing for triggers of anxiety, and the insight flow for milestone tracking and guidance.
The configuration onboarding flow addresses our design requirement for the solution to be configurable to various anxiety triggers, which can be very different across individuals. In this flow, users can pick their buddy, select the most common anxiety triggers that trouble them, specify how comfortable they feel with sharing with family friends or community, and add friends who they trust when you need someone close to talk to. From the app, this starts the user on their Desk Buddy journey. From there, the physical buddy device becomes the main interaction point, with the connected app becoming complementary.
The home and chats flow addresses our design requirement for the solution to be able to encourage users to share negative thoughts by providing sympathetic responses or helping users connect to their inner circle or loved ones, as sharing experiences is recognized as a helpful strategy. Conversations and chats can be initiated directly by voice with the physical buddy device, and users can reference live and past transcripts from the connected app.
The detection flow addresses our design requirement for the solution to offer real-time suggestions of monitoring anxiety based on symptoms, with a focus on improving work efficiency and solving procrastination. The physical buddy device will convey audible suggestions and prompts, leading users to the connected app for more detailed guidance.
The insight flow addresses our design requirement for the solution to provide positive emotional support (like celebrating positive achievements and milestones), as students are generally facing a stressful environment and feeling overwhelmed). Here, users can learn insights on the top anxiety triggers for them and possible coping suggestions to monitor over time.
More extensive final designs for all digital flows can be viewed using our interactive prototype on Figma!
Thank you!
Thank you for checking out this case study and portfolio of our work. If you are interested in learning more about the Desk Buddy, please leave us a comment!
University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering
HCDE 518 User-Centered Design Course, Autumn 2024
Team: Peter Hu, Jieqiong Ding, Jia Shu, Shivangi
