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We are the London-based marketing agency that has been helping our clients connect with their markets and customers for over 25 years. Whether it’s an immersive event or an award-winning integrated campaign, we always find the big solution.
Breathesimple.....my first task
My first role at The Big Group was to lead the team on creating the UI UX for breathesimple. A company helping people with health issues such as snoring, sleep apnea and stress. Breathing might be straight forward but many of us surpsrisingly don't breathe how we should and this affects our sleep with can cause health issues. The aim is to help users test their breathing which would then create a personal course to improve the breathing over time.
Logo, fonts & colours
When deciding the style of the brand I had to think of the clients who would be using the platform and what the brand should represent. There had to be a connection with the users who were dealing with these symptoms. I wanted the app and website to portray a calming but clinical professionalism as the scientist behind this concept who patented the idea had worked many years to help people. Light blue is a peaceful, calming colour. According to colour psychology, blue is associated with trustworthiness and reliability. Blue is also said to promote feelings of tranquility; light blue's gentle appearance means it is particularly likely to make that impression. I wanted the wave effect of breathing to run through the whole brand so I introduced a wave effect to the logo which represented a wave in the ocean which many associated with calm and a sense of tranquility when by the ocean.
I also wanted to bring a sense of sophistication and this font I felt suited the brand perfectly. The separation of characters were far apart to clearly identify each letter clearly. As most of the users that will be using this platform would be mostly of the elder generation.
Understanding the patients
Before creating any idea of direction I had to understand the product, it's capabilities and what exactly it offered the user before putting ideas to paper. The breathing basics course is completely free. It's a 4-day course which will teach you the fundamentals of good breathing. Over the 4 days we will measure your current breathing behaviour and recommend a longer term personalised training course tailored to your needs. Once the specific course is ready which is tailor costumed to its user the user can then purchase that course.
Record your breathing
So firstly the patient needs to give us their pattern of breathing for a number of days before we can recommend them a plan. I need to design a screen to tell users that they had to breath normally for a few minutes so their breathing pattern can be recorded. The user will need to do this in a quiet place and to be sitting upright. The audio narrator that will be speaking to the user is Wendy Lloyd, an English voice-over artist and radio and TV presenter. I researched other apps that helped users to be calm and meditate, it was a great insight of how to tell a story with a clear and calm voice. I felt apps such as Headspace, Calm & Fabulous did it best when showing a timer, countdown and audio calming the user as they gave instructions.
I studied the heart and its wave pattern. How a medical wave reads on a screen in a hospital when being examined by a doctor. The indicator also had to show a visible timer and countdown. The user needed to be able to stop and play at anytime even though this could interrupt their breathing. Indication of sessions and how far along they are. All this was taken into consideration when creating the main screen.
Recording your breathing
Did you know your brain is constantly changing? As we go through life, new experiences, challenges and even physical injuries, can all stimulate the brain to create new neural pathways or reorganise existing ones. This re-programming of the brain is called Neuroplasticity and is key to improving your breathing.
Building an understanding
I had the chance to work closely with the company director Jamie on this project and together helped push the project along to a finished product. Creating the UI & UX for not only the app but the website, together I had a understanding of the difficulties people faced when it came to breathing properly and how we could help to solve this by using the Breathesimple app you could train your brain to help you breathe better resulting in a much stronger pattern of breathing.
Right, where to begin
My first protocol when beginning a project is to start with research, even though I couldn't compare this type of project with another as it was the first of it's kind I still had opportunities to look closely to other medical apps, websites and designs to help me with my creativity. When I have built up a group of designs I dissect each part and it helps me put together a plan on how to move forward when creating my first prototype and workflow.
I wanted to keep it simple, clean and fun but still have a look which meant we're professional after all we're advising users on their health so when used people would have to feel confident when using the app which will be the main focus of the project as it is the app which would provide the training for users breathing. After some research I knew that the colour blue was a common style in the medical field and a colour users would feel comfortable with. The font was clean and had a rounded style to it and to complete the overall look a beautiful but strong gradient completed the foundation of the design.
Over the years I've grown to have a style which you can see throughout my designs. I like to keep things simple, clean and minimalistic. Adding popping colour brings a sense of vibrancy and receiving feedback from users just confirms that it works great.
What is great a bout placing thoughts onto the wall is that we can have some fun with it, tasks don't have to be tedious and the team can get together and lay down their thoughts.
Animated piece
I put together a final design to show off the app and hopefully this animation does just that. What you're viewing below is the first draft of the design but creating a prototype and putting it together to allow the team to see how it would function is always a step I like to take as it's a great opportunity for feedback.
Putting the website together
Putting the website together was fun and throwing ideas around with the team was great. I wanted the website to continue with the same theme used in the app with lovely curved shapes and vibrant blue colour which instantly shouted out confidence and adding the illustrations to complete the design just worked beautifully. Designing the website on XD and then cutting it up for the developers was easy and a great tool to work with. It does help having an understanding of your tools capabilities but as this was my first time using XD I had to learn while I worked on this project.
The funnels created in firebase allows me to easily monitor the performance on a daily basis. I can look at A/B testing and see if certain methods were better than others and can measure how customers respond to certain features or points within their journey. Hotjar is another tool I have used to measure users experience on our website. With funnels and heat maps I can quickly determine how users respond to certain aspects of the website and with other percentages available to me can see how long they have browsed the site and what was their journey. This part of the role is just a important as making the products as attractive as possible and user friendly of course.
Creating illustrations
Using illustration was a major part of the project and I need the illustration to provide information to the user just by looking at the design you could understand exactly what was going on before reading the information. We contracted an illustrator and together worked on the designs to build the project as one.
The Big Group Insight Website
The Big Group were expanding and needed a webpage to include the next part of its extension, Insight. Only difference was that this webpage consisted of many levels to branch off to different parts of the Big Group company website as a whole. more to follow
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Virgin Atlantic
Working at a large design agency allows you to possibilities to work with major clients as well as working along side some great talented designers. One of the projects i worked on was for Virgin Atlantic. The task was to create a banner to promote their credit card. Such companies always have their own guidelines to follow and timeline. Putting this task together using photoshop and some animation worked great and Virgin was pleased with the outcome.
The North Face
One of my favourite brands being an outdoor person was The North Face and I had this opportunity to work on their new merchandise which involved a British designer keen on using recycled tents and creating new products with them such as the bag you see below. The idea behind this task was to keep the design clean and minimalistic to keep the colour palette to a minimum achieved this and with added animation really made this a fine project to work on.
Final piece
The vibrancy of the yellow with the black straps really made this design pop and I personally do enjoy keeping the design minimal and focusing solely on the product. With the product matching the same colour scheme as the background adding shadow to give a sense of realism when the products rotated really brought this to life..
Animation
Creating the animation was simple as I had plenty experience in doing animations especially in photoshop but having a small piece to work with was the difficulty as I had to capture the users attention as this particular task was for social media, Instagram and what better way to get someones attention than to create an animated carousel.
