Ally
A wellbeing web app
for employees

Job

Product Designer - UX-UI Designer

Timeframe

Oct 2022 - Feb 2023 (4.5 month)

Toolbox

Figma Miro Marvel OptimalSort UsabilityHub

App creation Visual identity & guidelines User research Usability UX strategy UI design

The project

Ally is a concept product that employers can offer to their employees to help them reach a better work-life balance. It gives the users access to a personal coach and to tools that can be tailored to their needs.

The mission

Solving the stress problem for employers

Stress affects employees, but can also cause issues for employers by leading to:

less productivity
difficulty in retaining talents
negative work environment.

My goal here was to design a solution to help employees feel good at work and outside, and find the right work-life balance for themselves.

The strategy

Creation of a holistic solution

After a competitive analysis and some user research, I stopped to think about what could differentiate Ally from the existing stress-relief tools - what could bring the most value to users?

Rather than isolated tools, I designed a holistic support system, combining and linking together a selection of effective exercises as well as coaching sessions.

The approach

Information architecture as a focus

Following the research phase I focused on the architecture of the product and on streamlining the numerous processes of the application, using:

user journeys
user flows
wireframing
low and mid-fidelity prototyping

Interconnections between features

User flow for Julia, the workaholic persona, to book an appointment with a coach

Coach feature, from hand-drawn wireframes to mid-fidelity prototype

I then conducted a usability test and iterated on this process several times before moving on to designing the visual identity and UI of the product.

Coach feature, high-fidelity prototype

My biggest challenge

Simplifying complex features

Ally is a combination of various interconnected features, among which are complex ones.
Meet my nemesis: the Balance Wheel feature.

A usability test showed that the Balance Wheel screens I had first designed were too crowded and unclear. While removing no content, I needed to make the screen:

clearer
more usable
less crowded.

This feature was definitely a challenge, but also one of the most interesting parts of the project for me as I got to really go deep into what users expected and how they perceived and used my designs.

The Balance Wheel is an exercise for users to regularly rate and acknowledge how they feel about various aspects of their lives (health, love life, work...). In this feature they can:

complete a wheel
consult the results
visualise the evolution

Iterations on the Balance Wheel section screen

Initial wireframe

Fitting the key around the wheel
Reorganising the lower part, linking the wheel with the graph, and the date with the toggle

Adding colour:

Date highlight
Wheel areas differentiation
Graph lines identification
CTA

Reworking the grouping of elements: the comment belongs to the wheel
Giving less space to the comment
Reviewing the toggle and graph scale for more clarity

Giving more space and less prominence to the wheel key
Fixing the “See more” button

The result

Everything is coming together

Ally is now on its way to becoming a useful, holistic solution for a variety of employees to use, helping them feel good and find the right work-life balance.
The development of the Personal Coach and the Balance Wheel features allowed me to validate the principle of the product and to understand how users will interact with it. I also designed a Dashboard feature to give users a customisable overview of their situation and of the available options to help them.
With those 3 key features, I developed a framework for simple navigation, easy and pleasant use, and systematic connections between resources.

Read my detailed Ally case study