Insight Timer is an application that helps connects meditation guides with users on one platform.
In search of meditation enlightenment, I embarked on finding an application that was low-cost, inclusive in guides and high in the quantity of meditations. Eventually, I found Insight Timer. The company boasts its app as the #1 free app for mediation; based on a world-wide user base of 18 million, it’s offering of 95,000 free guided meditations and other free features. Needless to say, I was very excited about using the app and seeing if and how it could benefit my daily life.
After listening to a couple meditations and loving the cerebral and emotional outcome, I decided to move the app to my main phone screen-at this point, it’s prioritized. After a few days however, I quickly became disenchanted, not with the content, rather it’s organization and how long it takes to discover meditations I want to listen to at that very moment. The structure of the content, of most importance, on the home screen is convoluted. Finding different categories and types of meditations after opening the app, became a cumbersome task at 7:30am. Based on user interviews from a small group of people, ages 23-42….70% of users stated they had trouble finding the right meditation for them, at any given moment.
After auditing applications like Netflix, YouTube Insight Timer’s, it became clear that a simple solution to finding relevant content is implementing a hybrid recommender system like most of the major apps on the market. This would ideally allow the user to have a personable and fulfilling experience, the apps’ intended goal. A user-friendly way to collect data to predict relevant recommendations is to have the user input their current mood and or desired mood by the end of the meditation on the homescreen.
I decided to conduct user interviews, as this would help aid in understanding users and the world that our users were living in; I could analyze what their real daily experience was like and understand what issues users grappled with, that a wellness application could make better, maintain or make worse. The questions consisted of what their mental wellness practices and goals were and if they were able to find an app that can help them with that.
From the responses I gathered from user interviews, more than 50% of users had a major problem with the amount of content offered on the homescreen, making navigating the app overwhelming. My target audience consisted of persons interested in meditation to those who practice meditation daily. The audience ranged from relatively new users to those who use competing apps and those who barely use Insight Timer app.
Q: “What do you think about the features the app offers?
A: "Meets a basic criteria, but is there a feature where you can save certains videos/make a playlist.”
Q: “What do you think of the placement of content on the home screen or any other screen?
A: "On mobile, the spacing is awkward, yet also somehow crowded.”
More than half of users, noticed the quiz feature, however, they felt that is was not pronounced enough. 75% of users also stated they would choose a meditation in a rush based on the meditation thumbnail.