TAM: Take A Minute
A mobile app to remind student-athletes to take care of themselves amidst a busy schedule, with personalized recommendations
Christine Tang
At-A-Glance
TAM: Take a Minute is a mobile app idea conceived as part of the 6-week intensive Human-Centered Design class I took with MIT's Integrated Design & Management department. TAM focuses on alleviating the busy schedules of student-athletes, using AI to find the best gaps in their schedule to remind the user to "take a minute" and practice a chosen self-care method.
My primary role was facilitating our brainstorming process, refining the UI design, and creating the information architecture.
We started with the theme "On the Move" and told to identify our own problem space and user group. As no one in our group were student athletes, we chose to interview the student athletes on campus to discover their unmet needs and pain points.
From our interviews, we found that student-athletes frequently struggled with juggling both academics and their sport, resulting in many stressful overlaps. However, despite this stress, while some recognized this struggle, many did not prioritize themselves or self-care as a result.
unmet needs
Organization
Stay on top of responsibilities
Peace
Escape from a busy schedule
Flexibility
Minimize time conflicts
Self-care
Prioritize well-being
We followed MIT IDM's Human-centered Design Process, while also incorporating Agile design methods to ensure we would have an MVP at the end of the class.
We anonymously surveyed MIT students via Google Form, and conducted 15-30 minute individual interviews with both MIT and non-MIT students.
Interview demographics
survey respondents
in-depth interviews
sports represented
Interview results
We reviewed our results and organized all our notes into a Miro board, finding five common themes across both survey answers and interviews: time management, physical health, mental health, community, and priorities.
Key Quotes
- Sophomore, basketball player
- Junior, soccer player
Insights
We discovered that student athletes' primary needs were organization, peace, flexibility, and self-care, and initially brainstormed three How Might We statements:
We decided to focus on the first one. We wanted to focus on a matter that seemed more urgent. Student athletes commonly cited busy, stressful schedules yet were more disinclined to admit a lack of proactivity towards self-care. Common responses were often "I don't have time" or "My sport is my self-care."
We hoped to find a solution that could help them find that time to relax in a separate environment that did not simulatenously act as their stressor.
Personas
Sally (Primary User)
Junior, Biology Major, Soccer Player
Cares About...Needs...
Charlie (Secondary User)
Freshman, Undecided, Hockey Player
Cares About...Needs...
Brainstorming
Reflecting on the personas and overall user research insights, we began to ideate with a focus on self-care solutions for student-athletes. We charted a How-Why diagram and also facilitated a 10-minute brainstorming session. Based on our ideas, we also did a brief market analysis to see alternative self-care apps already available.
Our first approach
We initially settled on wanting to connect teammates and coaches to provide a social, community-based aspect to self-care reminders.
Mood and energy level checker
Daily reminders for self-care
Communication with coach/team
However, after initial user tests, we discovered common concerns:
Back to the drawing board
We realized that we had tried to address too many needs at once. After looking back at our ideation on Miro, we went back and focused on just one need: daily reminders for self-care.
Mood and energy level checker
Daily reminders for self-care
Communication with coach/team
Interviewee's schedule.With a new goal in mind, we also decided to address the feedback: student-athletes are so busy, that we decided that these reminders should be for short self-care breaks that fit into their schedule.
One interviewee had given us a screenshot of their schedule, packed with academics, sports, and a part-time job. We noticed that there were small gaps in their schedule that they could use for those short breaks.
We wanted our new solution to be able to find those specific small gaps to send reminders, for when it would be convenient for the user.
Based on this new idea, we developed a simplified user flow.
Get reminders at the right time
- Sync your calendar with the app, only getting reminders when you have a break in your schedule.
Choose when you get reminders
- Set when to receive reminders
- Indicate self-care activities you like to do
- Manually log or skip breaks if necessary.
Get notifications based on your preferences
- Choose what you're doing for a break and how long
- Smaller number of choices based on preferences
- Simple interface to encourage you to take time away from your phone
See past activity, streaks, and change preferences
- See activity and streak calendar to encourage you to maintain self-care habits
- Change self-care preferences at any time, with laid-out choices to reduce cognitive load
We returned to three interviewees to get feedback on our new prototype, resulting in the following quotes:
At the end of the 6 weeks, after practicing Agile and human-centered design methods, we presented our final high-fidelity prototype to professors and industry leaders.
Our group went through a lot of ideation and constant problem-solving, resulting in some rushed sections of the project. In particular, I think we could have used more user testing.
We also talked among our group of adding more incentives to pursue self-care, such as on-campus or local coupons after completing a certain amount of breaks, or logging a certain streak.
Acknowledgements
A huge thank you to my teammates, Ruofan Li and Christine Tang, who I collaborated with in all aspects of the project! We worked well in making sure all our opinions were voiced, heard, and incorporated.
I also have to thank the course staff from the IDM department, who were always open in giving advice and constructive criticism that helped us create TAM.