The Aqua Concept
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This is a concept I came up with for a design challenge from Metalab (including visuals). Enjoy the reading!
The challenge
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How could this practice be made more accessible for people in the workplace? For example, many find journaling a good way to expressively examine and document what thoughts might occupy them at any given time, both good and bad. What are some ways in which people can document their thoughts without it feeling too repetitive or task-based, or share things that they've learned with those around them? How might this tool offer guidance or support, without feeling obtrusive? ​
For many people, there is a great deal of purpose and self-worth tied to our work. We often face new challenges, which can turn into learning opportunities that foster growth and change. As we commit ourselves to meaningful endeavours in the workplace, how might we make sure that we're actively tracking our thoughts and moods to help promote and maintain good mental health?
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The brief
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How might we make sure that we're actively tracking our thoughts and moods to help promote and maintain good mental health?
Why do people record their thoughts and feelings?
Not only does regular writing make you feel good, it helps you re-live the events you experienced in a safe environment where you can process them without fear or stress. According to PsychCentral, keeping a journal can help you: Clarify your thoughts and feelings. Get to know yourself better. Keeping a journal helps you create order when your world feels like it's in chaos. You get to know yourself by revealing your most private fears, thoughts, and feelings. Look at your writing time as personal relaxation time. It's a time when you can de-stress and wind down.
The ultimate user’s goal: to maintain or achieve good mental health.
The customer
​​​During my research and ideation, I used a combined approach from Design Thinking methodology: a simplified version of empathy map and experience journey to identify pain points and opportunities, and defined a persona.
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Design Principles
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Make it quick (users have limited time)
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Give me advice
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Promote positivity
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Adapt to my needs
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I control my privacy
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Help me through my community
Competitive landscape
In the very limited time I had to complete this challenge, I checked other apps available to baseline my designs, looking for what they have best in terms of UX and what they missed.
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Momentum
Calm
Headspace
Daylio
Iterations
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The approach used in this project considers a combination of tools that help people at a workplace to take a quick break to record their feelings and thoughts through journaling, mediation and guided breathing exercises, tasks that are easy and simple to complete in a short break. Users can share their positive thoughts with people around them or their teams. The app bot is also available to give advice and the app starts with motivational message.
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The initial wireframes below represent the main scenarios: journal, mood tracker, guided meditation and breathing lessons
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Onboarding and Journal​
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Customers will find the modules on the home screen, where the primary task is to add a mood/thought (+). The additional modules are mood history, guided breathing exercises and meditation.
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Tracking
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​​Mood tracker is presented as a large fish tank as a timeline, where customers can explore. Negative entries are presented closer to the bottom of the aquarium and positive entries near the surface.
Breathing
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Breathing exercises for stress relief are presented through animation, along with 3 presets to choose from following the standard counts to inhale, hold breathing and exhale.
Meditation
The meditation module is presented through an animation of a journey through water, like swimming or scuba diving (inspired by drone images). The calming images complement the guided meditation playlist with using water and ocean sounds. The playlist management is to be defined later, e.g. Spotify playlist for the Aqua app, considering sounds with a minimum duration for meditation, e.g. 15 min or continuous sounds, letting the user to pause anytime. Since this is a concept, I considered a partnership with Spotify, displaying an app playlist featuring different artists, but following the water meditation theme.
Sharing good feelings with those around you
Users have an option to share their positive records with people located physically around them at the office or their team only.
Conversational experience
The app bot is a companion, and gives advice when situations require a conversation, but a human is not available to support or the user wants to keep it private.
Bot for chat and insights
Daily tip
Prototypes
Subsequent visit and seeing a positive thought from the community
Seeing your own mood history
Breathing exercise 4-4-4
Chatbot load
Visuals
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​The color palette uses warmer tones and not too much saturation, to promote enough contrast and visual interest. At the same time provide a calming, pleasant feeling. Like an aquarium, items move slowly. The overall approach for visual design and language should not display indications we are judging the customers, their entries can positive or negative.
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Qualitative research
Since this is a concept, my research methodology was to do a walkthrough of the app with colleagues at work and collect qualitative feedback. Here are some anecdotes:​​​
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"Ah, the Aqua app. I love how it pulls you right into that serene, deep-sea feeling. That teal and coral color palette is instantly calming. It’s definitely not another bright, distracting social media app."​
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"What really catches my eye is the little notification at the bottom: 'Today's intention: Be kind to yourself. Your own well-being is a constant, ongoing project. Nurture it gently.' That's a powerful, supportive message—exactly what I needed to read right now."
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"I see the floating faces right away - It makes the mood tracking feel more communal, less lonely than just clicking an emoji. I wonder: Are those the moods of people I'm connected to, or just visual placeholders for the emotion categories? If it's connected people, that introduces a whole new social dynamic to mental health tracking, which could be great... or slightly stressful if they look too happy!"
Final thoughts and learnings
​​​When it comes to mental health, handling the problems with positivity and sense of humour has proven as key to overcome difficulties. This project takes this approach on adding positivity to every aspect of the design. To promote engagement, I considered fast and simple tasks (reducing cognitive overload) to help customers to achieve their goals: to maintain and promote mental health.
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One key aspect not represented here, and a proposed next step, is to plan how to position this app in the market and define a revenue model.
