Vitamon is a habit-forming product designed to motivate and remind users to take their daily vitamin. Utilizing the hooked model (trigger, action, investment, reward), Vitamon encourages and incentivizes users to take their vitamin every day.
Vitamins are an important part of health and wellness, however, taking them is often a boring and forgettable task for many. Many people often forget to take their vitamins for multiple days on end. This can ultimately lead to a vitamin deficiency, which can have a detrimental effect on one's health, and can cause an increased chance of illness.
How might we motivate young adults to remember to take their daily vitamin?
Vitamon is a habit-forming product that that motivates users to take their vitamins daily. Users are encouraged to log their vitamin-taking every day by feeding their virtual "Vitamon" pet. The more they feed their "Vitamon," the higher they can find themselves on the leaderboard. An additional physical "Vitamon" container can be purchased and synched with a user's app. This physical container automatically logs the user's vitamin intake by using a motion sensor.
I identified five young adults who take vitamins and interviewed them to get a better understanding of their challenges and motivations.
Interview Goals:
• Understand current methods young adults use to remind themselves to take their vitamins.
• Understand how often young adults forget to take their vitamin.
• Understand what motivates young adults to take their vitamin.
• Most of the participants I interviewed did not currently utilize any methods to remember to take their vitamins.
• With that said, most of the participants I interviewed also frequently forgot to take their vitamins.
• Participants were intrinsically motivated to take their vitamins, but lacked extrinsic motivation.
Based off of the data from my interviews, I created my persona, Busy Bethany. She is a current college student who wants to stay healthy, but due to her studies, she has little free time and often forgets to do simple things like taking her vitamin every day. She is highly motivated by convenience and achievement.
I drafted a storyboard for my concept that would address the user's needs. I used this storyboard to clearly define and identify each phase of the Hooked Model and how it would play into my app.
• Trigger: The user receives a phone notification reminding them to take their vitamin
• Action: The user logs their vitamin taking for the day
• Reward: The user's Vitamon levels up as they continue to feed it
• Investment: The user's ranking on the leaderboard keeps them invested and continuing to use the app
The app would have a game aspect to it, where users could battle other Vitamons to earn points that would rank them higher on the leaderboard. I drew inspiration from Pokémon for this concept, and hoped it would be "super effective!"
Pretotyping is a method of validating ideas, conceived by Alberto Savoia, Google's first engineering director. I learned about this from his book, The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed.
For this pretotyping experiment, I used a mix of Pinocchio and Mechanical Turk pretotyping, to simulate participants being reminded to take their vitamin daily, and being rewarded when they do.
1. I found out when participants took their vitamin through an interview, and texted them every day around this time.
2. Participants would respond back when they had taken their vitamin.
3. In return, they were rewarded with an animated Vitamon GIF thanking them for logging.
Hypothesis:
At least 25% of participants will continue to log their vitamin taking for a whole week.
The results of my pretotyping experiment validated my hypothesis and proved my concept to be viable.
I sketched out some low fidelity wireframes with pen and paper to figure out the user interface for my app.
• I wanted to use a Vitamon mascot that would express a range of emotions and keep the user engaged.
• I wanted the battle icon in the navigation bar to be more prominent than the leaderboard and profile icons, as I wanted it to be a main feature of the app.
After creating my low fidelity sketched wireframes, I then converted them to high fidelity wireframes in Adobe XD to be used in remote user testing sessions.
I conducted remote, moderated user testing with five potential users via Zoom.
Tasks:
1. Feed your Vitamon
2. Battle another Vitamon
3. Visit the leaderboard and view Cailee's stats
Goals:
• Uncover any usability issues with the app
• Playtest the battle feature and get user's thoughts
• Much like in my pretotyping results, users once again appreciated the cute Vitamon mascot.
• Ultimately, most users were confused by the battle concept and didn't understand how it worked.
• Most users also didn't feel strongly about the battle feature, and simply wanted a quicker solution.
With the results of my user testing session, it was time to go back to the drawing board.
• Based off of my pretotyping experiment, I knew users appreciated the cute and fun appeal of my Vitamon mascot.
• However, in user testing, the game aspect confused players, and didn't meet their needs of a simple, quick, convenient experience.
I decided to ultimately drop the battle system from Vitamon, and focus on the cute appeal. I opted for more of a Tamagotchi approach, where users would focus on feeding their Vitamon every day. Users would still level up their Vitamon by feeding him, and would gain points to rank on their leaderboard by maintaining streaks.
For the visual design of Vitamon, I started out by creating a mood board embodying the cute and fun aesthetic that I was going for. This mood board served as the source of inspiration for my design.
While the battling aspect of the app may have been removed, I still wanted to keep a fun feel to the app itself. The user should still feel like they're playing a game when they feed their Vitamon. I utilized bright, fun colors and assets to make the app feel lighthearted and exciting to use. I'm especially proud of the cute Vitamon mascot...Who would forget to take their vitamins when they see his cute, happy face?
I applied my style guide to my wireframes and created my prototype. I wanted the app to look and feel almost like a mobile game. The prototype can be viewed below or by clicking here!
Additionally, to focus on Busy Bethany's need for convenience, I also introduced an optional non-GUI component to Vitamon, which would be available for purchase. This product would be a 2-in-1 smart pill container + reminder that would be synced to the Vitamon app.
Users would fill the Vitamon container with their vitamins and set the time they want to be reminded to take their vitamin. Using a motion sensor inside the container, it will know when the user takes their vitamin, and will automatically log it for them in the Vitamon app.
With this, users can still reap all the benefits of the Vitamon app, without ever having to pull out their phone.
I utilized the fake front-door method to validate if people would purchase the Vitamon container. Using Blender, I created 3D renders for my Vitamon pill container, and spliced together a short ad in Adobe Premiere. I then created a Vitamon Instagram account and uploaded the video as a sponsored post. Clicking the ad led to a Vitamon Google site, where users could learn more and sign up for early access. I ran the ad for 24 hours.
Promoted to:
• Men & Women in the United States
• Ages: 18-35
• Interests: Health, lifestyle, and self-care
Hypothesis:
At least 12 people will sign up for early access in the 24 hour time frame.
After running the advertisement for 24 hours, I received 14 sign ups for early access, validating my hypothesis!
Vitamon container's prototype and advertisement video used for my pretotyping experiment.
This project taught me a valuable lesson that sometimes, the first solution isn't always the best solution. While I originally thought a gamified experience would help motivate users to remember to take their vitamins, it wasn't the correct solution for my target users of busy college students. What they needed was something quick and simple, while still being rewarding. Overall, this project really helped me learn the value in revising and iterating.