My Self-Tracking UI Design - “Co-Relation”
For my Principles of Interaction Design class, I was asked to imagine an application that would require the user to ‘self-track’ data (of any kind). I imagined Co-Relation as an app that would bring more intentionality to social media use — in that it would ask users to report emotional sentiments back about their usage of the app.
In my design, users were prompted to log their feelings every time they closed a social media app. They could elaborate on the emotional sentiment they felt, how long they estimated they were on the app, and could leave any notes about the overall experience. Over time, the app would aggregate data and report back to the user a basic sentiment analysis across each social media app, as well as an estimated versus actual usage time on each app - all to create more intentionality in social media use and allow user self-reflection on their online behaviors.
This project taught me a lot about the importance of thinking through a logical user flow. While my first iteration just required a user to self-track in the app itself, through discussion with classmates I realized it made more sense to prompt the user themselves with a notification - that way it was easier to remember to track. I also wanted to practice a more minimalist design style, focusing on cool colors and not overly distracting functions/features, ultimately to remain true to the imagined mission statement of this application: “To better understand yourself”