Conversational VR Journaling Project

Voice Tech Global's Certification - Capstone Project

Conversational VR Journaling

For some people, mindfulness feels like a lot of work.
How about creating a journey into oneself with a little help from technology?

What's the challenge?

▸ CONTEXT

I joined the Advanced Conversational User Experience Design Course by Voice Tech Global. Each student had to build a concept to showcase their understanding of the different learning blocks. The mentors shared a list of voice opportunity scenarios for us to pick.

▸ CHALLENGE

"Calm has been an early explorer of voice with a relatively simple Google Action and Alexa Skill. They are watching the growing VR market with the success of Facebook's Oculus Quest.

They would like to explore what a Calm's meditation experience might have to offer their customers and whether it can grow into new Health and Wellness areas."

▸ DISCLOSURE

- Not affiliated to Calm, merely conceptual.
- Individual work

▸ PROJECT DURATION

3 months

The process

Benchmark

First, I explored all sorts of digital products related to mindfulness. There's already a million of them.

Some used voice for guided meditation, others leaned towards journaling. Some used VR to elevate the experience, but most relied heavily on the GUI. That's where I found an opportunity.

1.1 Benchmark - I explored a wide range of products related to mindfulness and analysed their communication strategy, their features and their disadvantages.

Where's the value?

I conducted a round of interviews and used the Value Proposition Canvas to make sense of the data. After stating my value proposition, I identified the jobs to be done that made the most sense with the project’s goals.

▸ VALUE PROPOSITION STATEMENT

This journaling virtual assistant feature helps self-improving young adults who want to practice mindfulness by promoting a natural reflective excercise and removing most distractions .

Settling for one idea

I crossed a few reframed problems with different technological approaches using the creative matrix method. Clustering, synthetizing and prioritization came in later, until one single solution was chosen.

1.3 Creative Matrix

1.4 Affinity clustering

1.5 Importance difficulty matrix

Meet Journey

Journey helps self-aware young adults who want to create mindful habits by immersing them into a distraction-free experience that enhances their cognitive and emotional abilities as an alternative for meditation.

1 ·

Blocks out distractions in the environment through virtual reality, setting the mood anywhere.

2 ·

Triggers spoken or written journaling by encouraging conversation and sharing a daily topic for them to talk about.

3 ·

Insight tracking to identify emotional patterns based on key words and mood check-ins.

Journey's persona

Mission + Conversational Goals

Journey wants to help you have more meaningful introspections by:

- Enabling distraction-free immersion.

- Offering guidance into the practice and topic suggestions to help people grasp the experience more easily.

- Creating insights so you can reflect on your progress

People in context

Three potential scenarios for Journey's use came to my mind at first: someone with a VR headset at home, someone with inconsistent privacy at home, and someone trying to make something out of commute time. After using a tool for exploring the user's context, called 'placeona', I was able to discard the latter.

Placeona - After evaluating privacy concerns, noise pollution, emotional state, and settings control, it came down to two relevant contextual profiles.

Storyboards - Breaking down the story helped me understand and represent how the person would go from a need to the action. I also explored the potential obstacles for each step of the way.

Ready?

Here's the result

Onboarding sequence on the mobile app

Contextual greetings

First time user

Return user

Return user (longer period)

Conversation repairs

Avoidant answers - A user letting Journey decide for them. Then it asks again for the exact input that it needs from the user

Crisis detection - Journey needs to break off from the path if it detects that the user’s safety is threatened

Disambiguation - A user giving Journey an answer that's hard to classify or needs further clarification.

Multimodal variations

Input/output flexibility - Journey lets the user choose between speaking ortyping, addressing the following needs:

- Situational noise conditions
- Speech, hearing and visual impairments
- Privacy concerns

I conducted 3 usability testings using a TV screen and a synthetic voice readout, which allowed me to iterate on texts that stretched too long or flows that were unclear for my test users.

Demo

Outcomes + feedback

I presented in front of a panel of experts for which I received feedback that feeds the takeaways for this project

RESULTS

I conducted 3 usability testings using a TV screen and a synthetic voice readout, which allowed me to iterate on texts that stretched too long or flows that were unclear for my test users

Takeaways

▸ THINGS I DID RIGHT

> Improvising the demo within minutes of the presentation

> Accesibility explorations allowed me to make a better sense of the inputs and outputs that applied to the situation.

> Adequate problem framing
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▸ THINGS I CAN IMPROVE

> I would've loved to do more testing to test the length of the phrases.

> Prototype the second path as well, to see how different the result is comparing GUI vs CUI flows.

> Polishing the tone - It felt a bit inconsistent in terms of formal/informal.

Conversational VR Journaling

Ready?

Let's talk