An Apple Watch App designed to encourage people to stay healthy and mindful with the help of a digital dragon friend.

This project was given to my advanced interaction design class in Fall 2020. The only prompt was to make an app designed for the Apple Watch. If it also benefited a person or society in some way, that would be ideal. I had never worked on the design for an Apple Watch before but I was excited to get started.

In doing some research on what I wanted to create I found myself thinking about fitness apps with characters attached to them. Apps, for instance, with a dog that you have to take care of by drinking water and exercising, otherwise they’d wither away and die. I decided that instead of that negative reinforcement with a loving pet I wanted to design an app where the pet takes care of the user as much as the user takes care of it.

As the sole researcher and designer for this app it was my job to facilitate the creation of this Apple Watch App. I did some competitive analysis, formulated some goals, and designed the app itself.

This project was completed during my Fall 2020 semester in my interaction design course. It began in August and ended in December of that year.

Figma

I started by doing some research on who I was marketing the application to as well as what their goals would be in a mindfulness and overall health scenario. I then did some more research on what apps were already out there and how I wanted this app to be different.

I then began designing an app with a customizable dragon that encourages the user to go on walks and do breathing exercises. The dragon, Ember, is customizable with many colors and backgrounds to choose from. The users would receive notifications encouraging them to go on a walk with Ember or notice an elevated heart rate, asking them if they would like to do a breathing exercise with the dragon. In designing the app in Figma I was able to animate Ember to breathe with the user as well as float along with them as they go walking. I started by doing some sketches and then created a first iteration of the app using some basic animations within Figma.

This app is designed for people of all ages, starting with kids up until grown adults and seniors. In user testing, I found that every user I tested with really liked the idea. One user suggested the addition of uploadable images for the background or reminders to drink water as well. There were a couple of UX things that needed fixing that I took care of in the customization section as well as the breathing exercise as well. Here, two iterations of Ember are seen. One before professor and user testing notes and my final version afterwards.

My professor really enjoyed the illustration of Ember and thought it was a great idea. She really appreciated the additional animations and felt my user testing was very professional and enlightening for any necessary changes to the design. Overall, this app was incredibly fun to design and I feel a strong connection with Ember at this point. I hope to see this, or something similar, implemented in the real world in the future.

• My first design for an Apple Watch was simple, looked good, and overall was a fun concept.

• I also used Figma's animation prototype features for the first time and that too was relatively successful.

• I had the opportunity to test with users from many various age ranges and they all really enjoyed the app in different ways.

• This course didn't have me doing a whole lot of research on the user. At least not to the extent I do presently with personas, journey maps, etc. I would have liked to do more.

• This project is a little older than the rest and could generally be improved from a design standpoint based on my growth as a UX designer.