Emerging media
The main proposition is to create a prototype for a mobile application, which will be focusing on homeworkers after the influence of the Covid-19 Pandemic. This app prototype will be created to track people's health and productivity. Additionally, it will be designed to remind people about the rest breaks and motivate them, which will help to monitor their mental and physical health every day.
background and analysis
Although homeworking is becoming more popular than working from the office environment, it has some disadvantages. With less reason to leave their chair, home workers tend to lead a more sedentary life with reduced levels of physical activity.
Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the majority of people have been working from home since the beginning of 2020. This impacted their mental as well as physical health. Therefore, it is important to create a mobile application that will encourage people to take breaks and live healthier lives.
Solution
As a result, I have decided to design an app that will focus on people, such as students, freelancers, and employees that work in desk-based jobs. In other words, this project is inspired by people, who due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, had to start working from home. However, this mobile application will be designed in a way that can be beneficial when working from home or even when going back to the office.
Competitors
I did some research on other apps that help people to track their health. Research shows that the most popular apps are: Fitbit and Calm.
Fitbit
The Fitbit tracker and other smartwatches can help track everyday activity, workouts, sleep, nutrition, and stress daily. Also users can interact with their friends and challenge each other.
Calm
This app supplies meditation products to improve mental health. With the help of guided meditations, soothing music, and bedtime stories, it helps to reduce stress and anxiety, boosts self-confidence, and induces better sleep.
Target audience
The primary target audience for this app will be homeworkers between ages of 16 to 64, who due to the Covid-19 Pandemic had to leave their office environment and start spending most of their time at home (Statista, 2020). Within this core demographic are people, such as students, freelancers and other people from various professions and vocations that had to leave their everyday places of work .
Name
At the beginning, I had a few ideas for my app such as Bwell, B healthy, Deskoholic that all could remind the user about the app. However I have chosen “HealthDesk” because it works on a number of levels:
-
It incorporates the word “desk” which is contained in the words “Desk-based”, being the key demographic for my application as well as its subtitle.
-
It sounds both snappy and authoritative.
-
The word “Health” in conjunction with the word “Desk” sounds very similar to “Help Desk” which is really what the app is.
-
These words also bring to mind “News Desk” which is a source of information.
Main Colours
I have chosen green and blue as my primary colours for the app as they are suggestive of peace, calm and wellbeing.
A brief look at the logos of Health care organisations shows a clear majority of these feature one or both of these colours in them.
Background Colours
The background colours are based upon research into those most suitable for use with colour-blind and non-colour-blind people.
​
Logo Design
The application’s logo is based upon blue and green colours both of which are associated with wellbeing. The design incorporates suggestions of a person sitting at a desk within the walls of a house. Below shown below are the various trial attempts that led up to the final.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
Character Design
I have selected characters whose forms are reasonably close to the human body and engage in an approximation to its normal movement.
After trying a number of different character designs I selected the below shown figures. These will be used to highlight the different exercises and activities available for them to carry out in their rest breaks. They will also act as the prompts to remind them to do so.
Illustrations
Design Elements
Users are encouraged to set reminders to perform various activities during their rest breaks. Icons clearly illustrating the choices available to them are incorporated.
Loading Sign
Initial sketches
Initial Wireframes Style
Working with the POP app
In order for me to be able to move my ideas forward and create an app that was easy and elegant to use, I wished to create a series of wireframes.
The most convenient way for me to do this was to produce a set of sketches which I then fed into the POP (Prototyping on Paper) application. From this point I was able to more fully conceive the logic and appearance of my app’s content.
Working with the Adobe XD
The next phase of the project was to improve upon the appearance of my initial wireframes by making them more visually stimulating, for example by using slick transitioning between screens. To achieve this I used the Adobe XD software.