Date: 2020
Why/What: Self-isolation (during a pandemic, no less) is lonely and can exacerbate existing mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. With no people and often no pets to keep people company, it’s easy to forget to practice basic self care like eating, drinking, showering, sleeping.
Through specific suggestions and cheerful rewards, this app would aim to improve mental & physical wellbeing of self-isolated people in quarantine conditions.
Who: People (ages 18+ most likely) who are self-isolated during quarantine. They may or may not have pets or be employed, and may or may not have pre-existing health conditions, with or without limited mobility .
How: Reminders + aids to do basics on a schedule - shower, eat, sleep, take meds, drink water, make food, assist in getting resources for free social connections & food resourcing, medical aid, physical workouts, help structure longer term goals (hobbies, job hunting, etc)
Onboarding should provide the app with some information to provide customized suggestions of self-care (i.e. we wouldn't want to suggest taking medications to someone not taking medications) and keep the person engaged and invested within the first few screens.
Selecting plant type and then naming the plant should provide some emotional connection and up the incentive to want to take care of it.
The last screens before you get placed into the game is a quick explainer of how to play it. In this case, how to take care of the plant.
Each self-care section would trigger a new onboarding flow as you select it. By breaking it up into smaller chunks of onboarding, we are less likely to overwhelm the user and/or lose their interest.
There's one plant for each "pillar" of well-being and you can take care of each plant by feeding it with self-care actions you log at the end of each day. Those actions are general recommendations tailored for people based on their onboarding answers. It will also provide resources for some of those actions like connecting you to online workout sessions.
This plant grows when you do basic self-care activities like eating, sleeping, drinking, showering, tidying your house, getting some sunlight, taking your medications, and talking to family & friends.
This plant grows when you do work towards long-term goals. After talking with some friends, I realized that a motivator/mood-booster during a scary pandemic for some folks is doing activities that helped them to think about the future. For example, improving their homes for the day they would have people over again.
The app would walk you through creating those goals and then creating a reasonable plan towards those goals. In this example, the goal is to “learn guitar” and the item is to “practice guitar for 30 min”
This plant grows when you do activities that work your body out. Part of self-care is getting your blood pumping, and working out can also be a big mood booster.
Taking into account a person’s unique physical abilities, self-care items would suggest walking, lifting, doing a zoom workout, stretching, etc. The cards might also be able to suggest a specific activity to do and link to an online class or YouTube video as a resource.
This plant grows when you do things that bring you joy - like hobbies, TV, games, etc. The suggestions would be personalized based on onboarding questions. The app wouldn’t suggest painting, for example, if that’s something you either don’t enjoy or don’t have materials for.