What is Chill Hub?
Chill Hub is an app and website that prompts people to live their best, well balanced life.
This project was completed as part of my Master’s program at MICA. Chill Hub took 8 weeks to design. We used Trello, Google Meet, Google Calendar, and Google slides to organize.
My Role
- Project managerment
- Editing
- Affinity mapping
- Sketches
- Presenting
The Prompt
Design an application to create an adaptable app (mobile or watch) that naturally nudges users throughout the day to meet their own work and life goals. The project took 8 weeks to complete.
The Goal
As a person balancing the demands of work and life, I want to be empowered as the keeper of my time, so that I can lead a healthy and full life.
- Learn– Assist users in discovering new ways to relax during their personal time
- Track– Establish tracking regimens to encourage reflection and better goal setting
- Link– Suggest use of applications users already subscribe to all in one location
Research
Over the course of two weeks, we surveyed 25 people and performed in depth interviews with five people. From this research we gained expert insight into how people balance their life and stress.
Competitive Analysis
There are many time management, mediation, and general health apps on the market. Here are a few that are doing a great job. We used these to influence our own designs. ChillHub has the ability to even link to some of these apps since they already do so well. Our app allows people to find all the work life balance tips and tricks in one spot.
Survey Takeaways
Through surveys, we wanted to find:
- How working from home has changed work/life balance since COVID
- What people do in their “life” time
- How people manage work/life balance currently
- What apps people use already to help them with work/life balance
We found that people could easily define what good and bad work/life balance consisted of:
The Good
- Staying organized
- Scheduling Fun
- Making plans directly after work
- Being active (gym, yoga, meditation)
The Bad
- Doing chores while working from home
- Wasting time on unnecessary things
- Doing draining/tedious tasks
- Thinking about work all the time
Interview Takeaways
The goal of the interviews was to find:
- What brings people joy in their lives?
- Do people want time management apps?
- Do people need help finding ways to make joy in their lives?
Mindsets
Design
Sketches
The whole team created crazy 8 sketches and voted on the best ideas via Google Meet. This really helped the team get excited about the next steps and have a clear understanding of the path moving forward.
Wire Frames
Mood Board
We spent time discussing how we wanted our app to feel. The focus was low pressure app that enabled people to have ownership over their time.
For the mood of our application were drawn to a cozy, lofi, hip hop vibe. We wanted our app to feel like a calm, cool but super chill space. We looked at inspiration from a variety of media to achieve this look, including branding, art, album covers, and interior spaces.
The elements that stood out to us most were flowing, blob-u-lar shapes, gradients, dark colors paired with neon and white highlights, and a subtle semi-transparent glassy effect.
Prototype
Next Steps
I had so much fun with the team! This was my first experience as a project manager and I truly enjoyed it. My background as a Aquatics Director and Program Coordinator helped me to stay organized and make sure everyone was feeling heard in the group. The class project ended before user testing, but it would have been nice to take this assignment to the next level.
