Process | Interactive Infographic

opportunity STATEMENT

Flowspace—Meditation is growing in popularity as an intervention to address mental health and everyday stressors. The number of people who have meditated at least once has tripled since 2012, with more than 52 million meditation app downloads in 2019 alone. Women are 38% more likely than men to meditate. Women (or more accurately, people who menstruate) experience hormonal fluctuations throughout the monthly menstrual cycle, which play a significant role in fluctuating emotions, thought processes, energy, creativity, and other functions in the body. This highlights an opportunity to integrate mental health and menstrual wellness. Enter Flowspace: Meditation for Menstruators.

Time frame: May 2021 - present; currently in dev

My roles: Product Design, Visual Design (This a personal project I'm working on bringing to life.)

Improving menstrual wellness through cycle day-specific meditation

Throughout the ~28-day menstrual cycle, people who menstruate experience fluctuations in hormones (predominately estrogen and progesterone) which play a significant role in emotions, thought processes, self-esteem, energy levels and other body functions, depending on hormones levels on each specific cycle day.

How might we use this hormonal 'forecast' to customize meditation recommendations for the mental and physical symptoms the user is experiencing each cycle day?

Inspiration & discovery

In early 2021, during the height of a global pandemic, meditation and mindfulness practices seem to be everywhere. Like many others, I started meditating regularly to navigate the ups and downs of an emotionally-turbulent year. One morning, just as I completed my daily meditation module, I receive a push notification from my period tracking app: "Your period is four days away." Oh no, I thought, here comes PMS...

Then a second thought occurs: Hmm, I wonder if there are meditations specifically for PMS?

Then another: I wonder if there's a PMS search filter on my meditation app?

When I realize there is not: I wonder if there's a way to sync my meditation app and my period tracking app?

Then, frustrated: Why do I have so many wellness apps for just one person? Can I consolidate them?

Finally: Gah! Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it just me?!

UX Research & Ideation

Curious about the need for a more integrated solution for mental and menstrual wellness, I started exploring these questions through competitive analysis, surveys, and user interviews. Was this actually a problem worth solving or was I simply an n of one?

Competitive Analysis

I analyzed some of the most popular meditation and menstrual cycle tools currently available. I found that while mindfulness meditation apps are quite popular, they tend to be for broad audiences and fairly general in nature. At the time, none of the services offered specific sessions for PMS or cycle-related symptoms. Additionally, most of the period tracking apps focused on period scheduling (when is my period coming?) or fertility tracking (what is my likelihood of conceiving on this day?). There weren't any solutions that focused on mood and mindset during the menstrual cycle.

Outside of wellness apps, the concept of 'Cycle Syncing' is rising in popularity as a lifestyle tool. Cycle Syncing optimizes lifestyle and scheduling decisions by looking to your monthly cycle. From one online community:

"Being a woman is a dynamic experience. Thanks to the ever-changing cascade of hormones, you’ve probably noticed that your mood, energy levels, and cravings are constantly changing throughout the month. The practice of cycle syncing uses this dance of hormonal shifts to your benefit. The truth is that you are never in the same hormonal state twice a month. Every day is different."

While Cycle Syncing is more focused on the external structuring of a menstruator's lifestyle and scheduling, it overlaps with the idea of supporting menstruators throughout their cycle, based on hormonal forecast for each cycle day.

Surveying

Time to talk to the people! Before doing any formalized research, I started casually chatting with menstruators wherever I could find them—climbers at my gym, friends on coffee dates, neighbors on the block—to better understand the tools they were currently using for period tracking and mental wellness and whether or not their needs were being met.

Most of the menstruators I surveyed do track their periods digitally (check) and do use a separate mindfulness app (check). Most have actively searched for some type of PMS related meditation (check) and do notice fluctuations in mood, mindset and cognition during their cycles (check).

Aha! A product idea emerges...

Product Idea

A way for motivated, self-aware menstrautors (in their 20s - 40s) to optimize their mental wellness and mindset according to where they are in their monthly menstrual cycle.

I whittle down the pool of potential users to the minimal viable audience...

Minimum Viable Audience (MVA)

Motivated, self-aware people who menstruate (in their 20 - 40's), interested in optimizing their mindset to achieve personal and professional goals (and be the best versions of themselves!).

User Interviews

Now that I've solidified a product idea and the MVA, I draft a more targeted set of user interview questions for the MVA. I was especially interested in research around:

Which period tracking and/or mental wellness tools are users currently using?
What solutions do these tools provide and where are they following short?
When throughout the day do users prefer to check in on their mood or mindset?
Do users notice a strong correlation between mindset and/or mood and where they are in their monthly cycle?
When was the last time PMS threw a user off of their mental game?
How are they dealing with it now?

Some common themes emerged:

The majority of interviewees have searched specifically for cycle-related meditations, mostly meditations for PMS.
Most interviews are currently using both a meditation app and a period tracking app
Common tools used include: Insight Timer, Calm, Headspace, Flo, Eve, Clue
First thing in the morning (pre-emails, pre-coffee) is the most preferred time to check in on mindset

And a few insights:

One interviewee noticed that she feels like she also receives moments of extreme clarity on certain days of her cycle. She noted having an especially "low tolerance for some of the annoying things that I can normally tolerate..." and likes to think of these cycle days as an "enlightenment tool" in which she trusts her intuition more than other times. [This stood out as a possible JTBD: How might we better support self-trust and intuition for users?]

Another interviewee preferred a keeping detailed bullet journal as a comprehensive solution for tracking period, mood and energy fluctuations and other general notes about her daily well-being. She preferred this analog solution due to the higher level of granularity into all aspects of her daily wellness.

Persona &
Empathy map

Our persona, Alex, is a 34-year-old marketing manager who wants to be more in tune with her body and work on shifting negative thought patterns to more positive ones.

With an empathy map, we can imagine a major pain point for her being a lack of integrated tools for women's health and wellness issues.

Journey map

I mapped out the process of our user persona, Alex, experiencing an emotion, identifying it as hormone-related based on her cycle day, searching for a meditation to address that emotion, finding it and listening to that meditation.

Using what we know about her, we can hypothesize what her feelings and thoughts might be at each decision point, and consequently identify an opportunity for improvement.

The persona, empathy map and journey map help inform the problem statement and user scenarios.

Problem Statement

A motivated, self-aware person who menstruates needs cycle-specific meditation and mindfulness exercises because they experience a range of emotions, mindsets, energy, thought processes, cognition, creativity and other body functions based on the hormonal fluctuations of their cycle.

User Scenarios

Scenario 1:
Alex is a career-focused, health-conscious 30-something woman. She is looking for a better solution to track PMS and her cycle-related moods after her partner noted that her stress levels about work (very high) seemed to be disproportionate to the actual stressor (a low-to-moderately critical feedback email regarding a recent work project). She decides to keep better tabs on her cycle and searches the app store for a period tracking tool where she can easily track her mood and emotions throughout the month. She is frustrated by the current offerings, mostly focused on fertility tracking.

Scenario 2:
After recognizing that she might be feeling extra nervous about an upcoming presentation at work because she is PMS-ing, Alex searches online for a guided meditation specifically tailored to PMS-related stress. She finds a few options on YouTube for “PMS-related stress” but has a hard time connecting with the very “woo-woo” vibe of the videos’ narrators and struggles to translate the "hippy-dippy" mediation to her professional goals.

Scenario 3:
Alex has recently been feeling burnt out, underwhelmed and lacking passion in her current career path. She’s not sure why today, all of a sudden, her current career path feels totally unbearable and decides to do what any good millennial would do with one of life’s biggest questions—Googles it. After typing “why am I so burnt out and dissatisfied at work” into the search engine, Alex’s inner critic takes over telling her: “You’re lucky to have a job. Focus on gratitude. Where is this come from all of a sudden?” Alex decides to sweep these unsettled feelings under the rug for the time being.

Information architecture & Interaction Design

Based on the user scenarios, I began mapping out user and task flows to help outline the key pages for the MVP. I knew I needed a dashboard where users could a) quickly view their cycle day and phase, b) have a way to log overall mood and symptoms, and most importantly c) have a large CTA button to listen to their daily meditation.

I created a site map with pages for a dashboard, meditation player, cycle calendar, library of saved meditations, and account settings.

Site map & User FLows

I created a site map with pages for my MVP and future features to add to the product roadmap.

Then I outlined New User and Current User Flows (and various task flows within) to identify gaps in the UX.

Persona &
Empathy map

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Prototyping & testing

I worked on the wireframes in tandem with the task flows to create wireflows and a testable prototype of the MVP.

Early wireframes

An early prototype created to quickly test for gaps in the Current User task flow.

TAsk flow patterns

One of the trickiest task flows was "Add a symptom", in which users can create their own custom mood or symptom. After testing different versions, dev notes and the revised flow are shown to the right.

User Interface Design & Branding

As I started thinking about the branding and visuals, I wanted to capture the sensation of ebbing and flowing through difficult emotions with ease. It's a meditation app for people in flow – err, who menstruate. Flowspace!

Branding &
CONCEPT

Flowspace – a meditation app that helps users move through difficult emotions with fluidity and ease—uses organic shapes and fluid lines in its visual branding.

I also incorporated the granularity of bullet journals, the cyclical nature of seasonality calendars, and a balance of energizing and calming colors.

I created components to create an atomic design system. The four colorways correspond to the four phases of a menstruator's monthly cycle (menstruation, follicular, ovulation, and luteal). Upon opening the app, users can instantly determine what phase they are in based on the color of the UI.

UI Design

The UI design is based on fluid lines and organic spaces to create a feeling of ease and calm.

There are four color variations of the UI, depending on which of the four phases of the menstraul cycle (menstural, follicular, ovulation, luteal) the user is in.

Final prototype

High fidelity prototypes of the onboarding flow (slide 1) and MVP (slide 2).

conclusion & reflections

There is more work to be done! Here are a few items on the roadmap.

Address edge cases, such as irregular cycle lengths
Invite scientific reviews from menstrual wellness experts
Refine technical features, such as the growing database of recommended symptoms
Create a community around menstrual wellness beyond an individual’s daily meditation practice; Provide a feature for more education and resources around cycle hormones and menstrual health
Refine micro interactions & animations to be more sophisticated