Zinnia Health Overview: Zinnia Health is a healthcare company dedicated to societal welfare, emphasizing holistic approaches and personalized treatment plans. Operating thirteen rehabilitation centers nationwide, they empower individuals to thrive and overcome substance abuse.
Problem:
The journey to sobriety extends beyond the rehabilitation center, with many facing loneliness and a lack of motivation post-departure, leading to relapses. Challenges in maintaining sobriety at home include:
Absence of a supportive community and like-minded peers.
Inconsistent means of tracking personal growth.
Limited access to educational and mental health resources.
Solution:
Zinnia Health aims to foster connections, simplify sobriety journeys, and minimize relapse risks. Key solutions include:
Building supportive communities for ongoing connection.
Providing consistent progress tracking tools.
Enhancing access to educational and mental health resources at home.
User Research
The next step was conducting user interviews. Conducting six user interviews on alumni and alumni coordinators of the Zinnia Health programs, all from different demographics and backgrounds, we asked individuals how they desired to stay connected to Zinnia Health after treatment and also targeted certain pain points, such as sobriety progress, relapse prevention, and alumni resources. Here are some of our findings:
Here are some of our findings:
Connection within the recovery community is so important in creating strong support systems. Individuals cherish connections with other recovering addicts, as they are able to trust and emphasize with people who have gone through the same struggle and demons.
“I still talk to them on a daily basis. All my friends from treatment. Sometimes they are the only people I can talk to.”
A lot of people going through the treatment process or even recovery are too “proud” to call for help.
"I was scared, embarrassed even, to ask for help. That’s just the person I am. I think I have everything under control."
Rewards and milestones help build camaraderie and boost motivation.
“I would also love to keep in touch with other people’s progress and milestone status so I know I’m not alone.”
Talking with these individuals, I realized how important human connection is throughout the entire treatment process. Recovering addicts want to stay in touch with people they trust, whether it be friends, mentors, or others who have gone through the same process as them. Furthermore, they don’t want to be controlled or feel like someone else is imposing their will upon them. It’s more beneficial for them to take things their pace and provide empathy and autonomy.
Brainstorming
Taking our user research findings, our team used affinity diagram and ideation to synthesize our findings, organize our ideas, and determine the main needs that our target audience has through trends, insights, and pain points.
We were able to identify three core needs from our target audience:
I would like to have a variety of both new and established features and resources to maintain my sobriety.
I would want some logistic information before entering, and take steps to fully prepare myself for leaving.
I would like to reach out and develop support systems around people who I can relate to and share similar experiences to me.
Personas
From there, we created two personas to represent our target audience’s demographics. This let us really step into their shoes of our target audience and capture their essence and their characteristics.
Max, 36, from Boca Raton, Florida, is married with two young kids. He began opioid abuse in college and has a history of domestic violence. His wife, concerned, referred him to a treatment center. Max, now six months sober following two relapses, uses a handwritten diary for sobriety tracking, having been put off by a mobile app's tone. He believes online platforms need closer monitoring.
Goals
Not to relapse again
Help himself as well as people around him to stay sober
Meditate and keep a positive mind set
Fix family relationships and become more responsible father
Be consistent and helpful at his job
Keep a routing of going to inspirational meetings
Challenges
Disassociate with social groups that he used to abuse drugs with
Staying connected with alumni and alumni coordinator.
Have difficulties opening up and asking for help
Disappointment in himself after relapse
Lack extra incentives for sobriety tracking
Meet Sarah, a 42-year-old Denver resident and a mother sharing custody with her ex-husband. Post-divorce, she battled alcoholism, leading to a felony conviction. Concerned about her well-being, her family referred her to the Newport Treatment Center in California. Post-treatment, Sarah's successfully maintained sobriety through Sober Time, staying connected with her alumni coordinator and friends from TC.
Goals
Be an example for other addicts
Regain family and children's trust
Sustain sobriety
Connect with others sharing similar experiences
Establish a consistent daily regimen for meditation and positivity
Challenges
Difficulty finding local support groups or meetings after leaving TC
Occasional urges to drink
Need for ongoing education about drug addiction across all ages
Family's desire to get involved without clear means to do so
Customer Journey Map
With the affinity diagramming and personas, we constructed a customer journey app to identify the main sections of our app that would tackle the needs detailed above:
Onboarding/Start using the app — related to pre-admission and start using the app
Growth — tracking progress through milestones and reward
Community — connecting individuals with friends, mentors, and other alumni
Resources — Providing resources related to sobriety, relapse prevention, and mental health
We synthesized our research into an information hierarchy diagram, outlining the significance of each potential screen. This helped us prioritize key information while identifying secondary elements. Additionally, it provided a blueprint for the anticipated design flow, enabling us to clearly identify the primary sections of our app and the features associated with each.
Priority Map for Features: Future app developments will be guided by this map.
Design Solutions
Low Fidelity Explorations
In our initial low-fidelity explorations, we began experimenting with a diverse array of potential features for our app. Embracing creativity, we focused on extensive design exercises that emphasized the breadth of our explorations, allowing our imagination to guide the process.
I explored a variety of features, including a messaging mailbox, meeting schedules, a sobriety tracker, hotlines, and resources for relapse prevention.
For storyboarding, we categorized these features into specific sections of the app: Onboarding, Growth, Community, and Resources. I focused on the Growth section, using storyboarding to address two key questions:
How can our app motivate users to maintain their sobriety?
How can we design a product that enables users to track their progress in a convenient and comfortable way?
Designing the Milestone Section for Enhanced Motivation and Engagement
Context:
Olivia often uses her phone but is experiencing a decline in motivation and inspiration.
Developing a Progress Tracking
Context:
Brad, post-treatment, is keen to showcase his improvements to his cousin.
Problem:
Despite achieving her milestones, she feels isolated in her journey.
Problem:
Brad is proud of his sobriety duration but wishes to impress with more detailed statistics.
Solution:
Integrate a feature showing how many others achieved the same milestones recently, creating a shared sense of achievement.
Solution:
Introduce multifaceted progress tracking, focusing on key life aspects such as health, savings, and overall life quality.
Resolution:
This communal aspect helps Olivia feel united with others in her sobriety journey, encouraging her to pursue further milestones.
Resolution:
Brad can now present a well-rounded view of his progress, gaining additional motivation from the positive feedback of friends and family.
The storyboards resulted in the decision to proceed with MVP (Minimum Viable Product) features. These include onboarding, user profiles, tracking, community communication tools, along with inspirational quotes and meditations.
Medium Fidelity Explorations
In my medium fidelity explorations, I focused on refining the onboarding process and developing three features for the growth page.
Onboarding:
Our approach to onboarding aimed to address a key user need: delivering comprehensive logistical information while personalizing the experience to prepare users effectively for reintegration into everyday life. This entailed designing an authenticated login page and incorporating questions about crucial dates, addiction diagnosis, personal details, and detailed privacy terms.
Onboarding Flow
Tracking feature
In developing the tracking feature, the focus was on enhancing usability, offering detailed analytics, ensuring intuitive interactions, and efficient use of screen space. The aim was to create a streamlined user journey from the home growth pages to unique features, prioritizing the delivery of only the most essential analytics.
User Testing Feedback
Following our user testing sessions, the feedback was generally positive, yet we identified several areas for improvement:
Implement a standardized design for the profile, bookmark, and search bar throughout the app.
Introduce a search and filter feature on the community page for easier navigation of posts and content.
Incorporate an alumni directory into the contact list on the resources page.
Ensure that all functional assets are visibly interactive to users.
Merge the growth page with the home page for streamlined access.
Add more detailed analytics, such as records of meetings attended and water intake tracking.
Hight Fidelity screens
For high-fidelity screens, we adhered to the existing Zinnia Health look and feel. A custom design system was developed and implemented within Figma.
Prototype
This fragment of the prototype, encompassing the onboarding, home, and daily check-in sections, was designed specifically for the iPhone 13 Mini.