Quitime

Quitime

An application designed to help heavy smokers quit smoking in an easy, effective, and economic way by providing free digital Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT).

UI/UX Design | Interaction Design | Visual Design | Mobile App Design | UX Research

Tool

Sketch; Illustrator; Photoshop, Protopie.

My role

Interaction & Visual designer & UX Researcher

Team Members

Anne Zheng (Researcher & Developer) 

Duration

8 Weeks

How to help heavy smokers quit smoking in an easy and effective way?

Scoping Framework

Territory Map

To help us understand all the stakeholders and relevant areas, we created a territory map.  

Competitive Analysis

In competitive analysis, we found the 4 most popular ways of quitting smoking:

Quit Cold Turkey

Let users set a date and quit by that time without any additional help.

Pros: No cost.

Cons: Requires willpower & fail easily.

Distractions

Distract users via games when they are suffering from smoking urges. 

Pros: No cost & interesting.

Cons: Research shows that users get more cravings when trying to avoid them. Thus, this method is not useful in the long-term. 

Motivations

Show users how their health conditions are improved when quitting smoking.

Pros: No cost & effective 

Cons: When slipper happens, they will feel guilty and their motivations wane.

Nicotine Therapy

Nicotine patch, gum or spray can reduce physical withdrawl symptoms.

Pros: Effective & easy to use.

Cons: Expensive. Some users feel sick after using them. Cannot reduce mentally cravings. Become addictive over time.

What if we offer both professional psychological therapies and positive motivations to our users in a low-cost way?  

Exploratory Research

S.E.T Factors

10

User Interviews

Before we started design, we dedicated time to learning target users' pain points and needs.

Demographics

6 females, 4 males.                     

Years of smoking: 3-21 years.             

All of them have attempted to quit smoking before.

1

Secondary Research

During secondary research, we discovered ACT, an empirically-supported treatment that can help smokers gradually reduce fear toward urges and build confidence to quit smoking by letting them accept rather than avoid their urges. and thus decided to apply ACT principles in our design.

Key Motivations

Why users want to quit smoking?

Stay Healthier

"I want to live longer..."

Live Better

"My children are my inspiration..."

Save Money

"Nicotine Patch is so expensive... I have to stop using it."

User Problems

Problem1: Lack of Confidence

Smokers who tried to quit smoking several times often experience fear in relation to their own urges and lack of confidence in defeating them.

" I didn't make it last time, how can this time be different?"

"This method may work for others, but not me." 

Problem2: Need Economical Solutions

Many smokers cannot afford nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine patch, or mental therapy.

"I stop using nicotine patch when I realized that it was more expensive than cigarettes."

Problem3: Negative Loop

Users who avoid thinking about urges or use distraction to manage their cravings end up developing more urges to engage in substance use.

"I try not to think about urge, but it just gets stronger and stronger."

Target Users

Persona 1: User with low confidence & want to save money.

Persona 2: User with enough money but low confidence & low trust

User Journey

Work together to come up with the use case, scenarios, and user journey map. 

We used the results from post-interview surveys to draw the users' feelings across different quitting stages. 

Discover Common Patterns

Our Solution: ACT Therapy

Other Feedbacks

1. The on-boarding should not be too long.

"If it's more than 2 pages I won't read it."

 "I don't need instructions to use an app."

2. Reporting Urges should not require too many user inputs.

"I will forget report my urges or smokings."

"That's tedious. Why should I do that?"

3. Users should be able to take therapies in multiple ways.

"If I'm working, I can't stop to read a motivational quote."

4. The therapy should be interactive.

"Make it interactive; swipe through; let me feel like I'm participating."

Ideation

Platform Ideations

We decided to choose

Mobile App (Providing Easy-To-Access Interactive Therapies) + Wearable Device (Automatically Tracking Urges & Smokings)

Concept Evaluation

Participants: 6 | Tested Features: 8 | Rating Scale: 1 - 5

Helpfulness Ranking: 1(less helpful) - 8(more helpful)

Inclination Ranking: 1(less inclined to use) - 8(more inclined to use)

Key Learnings

1. Setting a quit deadline doesn't work.

"It makes me nervous. It's like I'm working on a task."

"I don't know if I can quit before a specific date. How can I know that initally?"

2. Rewards need to be matched with users' primary motivations

"The gifts or badges do not help. I want to know how my health can be improved."

3. Reminderes may become a trigger

"If I see notifications each day, I will just delete it."

"It reminds me of smoking, which is something I'm avoiding now."

4. Users don't want to interact with strangers on an online community.

 "I don't want to post my pictures or read others' stories."

5. Reporting is still tedious and not related to motivations.

"I will forget to report that."

"I don't know why should I do that? Will it help me quit?"

6. Therapies can be more interactive.

Participants want to see more interactions in therapies, like animations with music or audio. 

Wireframe

Design

Sign In

Sign in with email or Facebook

Sign Up

System will recommend the best solutions to users based on their answers to those questions.

Easy-To-Access ACT Therapies

Users can easily access to free ACT Therapies. "Urge control" therapies help users manage their cravings and prevent slippery, while "after smoke" therapies release users from negative emotions that trigger stronger cravings.  

Therapy Navigation

Swipe left and right to go back and forward; swipe down to return to the summary page.

The donut chart indicates the progress of an unfinished therapy. The bottom progress bar allows users to access to unfinished therapy easily and smoothly.

Therapy Settings

Users can pause / play the therapy, turn on / off the captions, share with their friends, switch between video and audio mode, and view their progress.

The main idea of those therapies

is to help users understand that having urge is normal, and they should be confident on defeating it.  Users can choose to view the video, listen to the audio, or simply read it. 

Rewards & Motivations

Users see a different finish screen every time when they complete a therapy. According to Hooked by Nir Eyal, the unpredictable rewards help users build long-term motivations. Moreover, by providing further readings on benefits of quit smoking, we reinforce users' motivations. 

Health Analysis

BY reporting their urges and smokes, users can view their smoking trend over time, and see how this related to different health conditions. 

Wearable Device Automatically Tracks Smoke

By paring wearable device with app, users will be able to report smoke without manually entering anything. The wearable device will automatically detect the gesture of smoking and update the data in the app. 

Visual & Branding

Iterations

First Iteration

Sitemap

Second Iteration

Results From Usability Test

1. Merge "Report" and "Analysis" together

In usability tests, I found that users want to focus on their main tasks ---- to take therapies and see overall trends and health improvement. Although it was very easy for them to find the way to report urge / smoke, users mentioned that they were confused that what was the most important task. Thus, I moved "report" function into the analysis page. 

2. Remove "community"

Many users say they do not want to post pictures or see others post something when they try to quit smoking. Instead, they want to be able to share their progress with their close friends and family members only. Thus, in the 3rd version, I removed the "community" feature and allow users to share their progress to other social medias or to their friends. 

3. Add on-boarding pages.

Future Actions

1. Create more therapy contents.
2. Run usability tests on the therapy content. 
3. Design a wearable device that can intelligently track users' smoking behaviors. 

Reflections

1. Fully understand the actual user needs and pain points is a necessary and crucial step before the actual design.
2. Before designing more detailed content, test the workflow and sitemap with target users to avoid the waste of time.
3. Expect to have multiple iterations.