Overview

Duration: 2 week sprint​

Type: Solo Project

Tools Used: Figma, Miro

Methods: Interviews | Affinity mapping | Persona development | User journey | Site mapping | Lo-fi wireframing | Prototyping

Index: Problem | Research | Design | Prototype | Reflection

The Problem

What’s the Big Deal with Burnout?

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, burnout is defined as “physical, emotional or mental exhaustion, accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance and negative attitudes towards oneself and others.”

With remote work becoming more and more common, rates of burnout among young professionals has increased. This impacts their ability to be productive at work, build and maintain meaningful relationships, and overall lead a fulfilling and healthy life. Deloitte’s survey of 1,000 full-time US professionals found that 77 percent of respondents have experienced employee burnout at their current job.

With Breakeroo, I hope to fight this problem and improve the quality of life for professionals working remotely everywhere.

Research

Interviews

In order to understand burnout from the perspective of our users, I conducted interviews with 3 young professionals who experienced burnout, particularly while working remotely.

In conducting 3 interviews with young professionals between 25 and 32, I identified three main problems that contributed to burnout. 

1. Working longer hours. Compared to when they were working in person, two of three interviewees reported working longer hours once remote.

2. Lack of boundaries between work and life once remote. People felt that they could not leave the work mindset, and receiving work notifications at all hours of the day made them feel obligated to always be working and responding to work requests.

3. Neglect of their physical and mental health. All 3 interviewees stated that due to their work, they found that they stopped taking care of their physical and mental health. They found that they exercised less, resorted to microwavable or fast foods more often, and experienced poor quality of sleep.

So what can we do to tackle these problems?

Finding the Solution

Our Persona

In order to find a solution that keeps our users in mind, I created Julissa, our persona. Julissa is a 28 year old living in New York, working as an insurance agent from home. She needs reminders to take care of social, mental, and physical well-being because she finds it difficult to leave her work mindset when working remotely from home, leading to burnout.

Like our users, Julissa can easily become entrenched in her work and needs reminders to take breaks. Even during lunch breaks and outside of work hours, she can feel obligated to respond to work calls and messages, and finds that since working remote, the line between her work and life has become blurred. She has begun to feel isolated from her family and friends, and needs help. So what can we do to help her?

User Journey

In order to understand Julissa’s struggle with burnout throughout her day, I created a user journey following her from the beginning of her work day, to the end. I saw that Julissa was not taking the breaks she needed to, and that there really wasn’t a time for her to compress without thinking about work. This led to her feeling unmotivated and unproductive, and affected her ability to socialize and engage in hobbies outside of work.

Design

Features

In order to help Julissa, I created four main features in Breakeroo to solve her problems.

1. Breakeroo has a built-in stopwatch that begins to run once a button is pressed to begin the work day. Depending on user preferences, the stopwatch can pause during breaks, during lunch hours, or not at all. The user can set a limit for how long they would like to work in a day. Once that time has been reached, the app will notify the user that it is time to put their work away!

2. Breakeroo provides an option for users to pause work specific notifications during breaks, lunch, and before and after the work day.

3. Breakeroo has a page for blog posts full of ideas to help users like Julissa lead a healthier lifestyle. With sections for meditation guides, easy and healthy recipes, exercise routines, and more, the Breakeroo blog section has something for everyone seeking to take better care of their wellbeing.

4. Breakeroo also provides an option for users to schedule timed breaks throughout their work day. This way, users can receive reminders to step away from the desk and take care of themselves.

User Flow

Using the user journey, which essentially followed the user through the beginning and end of a miserable day, I began to think of ways our app could be integrated into her life that would make her experience better. I created a user flow to aid my thinking process and imagine our user spending her first day with the app from the start of her work day, to the end. This gave me a clear idea of how our functions may flow together into a seamless experience that elevates her existing lifestyle.

Lo-Fi Wireframe

My low-fi sketches mainly wanted to capture the sign-up process for users first using Breakeroo.

However, there are other features of Breakeroo that are just as important as the break notifications. Let’s take a look at what they look like on the prototype.

Reflection

Next Steps

Given that this was my first UX Design project, there are many steps that I am hoping to take to improve this project. 

Must Do:

• Conduct user testing and use data to improve the app

Should Do:

• Chunk info on the questionnaire prototype onto multiple screens to make it easier for users

Could Do:

• Add a video section so that users can watch videos in addition to read blog posts

• Add a social feature so that users can keep each other accountable for taking care of themselves, and possibly have social events

I look forward to continuing working on this app, as I genuinely believe in its mission and look forward to seeing my own growth as a UX designer.