tunisiallsmith

Company

SVSU Cardinal Solutions - SVSU Wellness

Role

Product Designer

Tools

Figma and Miro

DAte

Aug 2024 - Jan 2025

Deliverables

Design Assets: Sitemap, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes, Usability Research, Sketches/Wireframes, User Flow Diagrams, UI Style Guide, Design Systems/Assets Hand-offs, Interactive Prototypes, and High-Fidelity Mock-ups.
Research Findings: Conducted Surveys, think-aloud protocols, personas, and journey maps.
UX Report: Consolidated insights, decisions, and results.

2 mins

Average Completion Time

Reduced from 5.2 minutes by grouping exercises and improving navigation clarity.

95%

Task Success Rate (+30%)

Increased from a 65% baseline after simplifying the routine-building flow.

5/ 5

User Preference Score

Self-reported satisfaction during testing, doubling the original score of 2.5.

Discovery

01 — Discovery

The Problem: Understanding the Gap in Wellness Support

In my insightful conversation with Associate Professor of Kinesiology, Gena D. Guerin, it became evident that students were facing a significant obstacle: they lacked a structured and accessible tool to help them effectively navigate wellness challenges and prepare for their future careers.

How Might We

Define & Identify

02 — Define

Bridging Kinesiology and Personal Growth

Currently, there is no reliable platform that addresses the academic and career aspirations of Kinesiology majors while also supporting non-majors on their wellness journeys.

As students strive to stay informed about the latest wellness resources and integrate them into their daily lives, I started by investigating the wellness app industry to assess how well current products support their well-being.

This gap represents a unique opportunity to create a space where students of all backgrounds can thrive, enhancing their physical and mental well-being together.

Understanding the User

After getting first hand accounts of the users, I meticulously recorded and transcribed each session to create detailed personas and a comprehensive journey map, highlighting critical problem areas, insights, and actionable opportunities.

The completed journey map provides a clear visual narrative of the user’s current experience, allowing us to synthesize pain points into our key design findings.

Insight

By researching deeper into the problem it was revealed that students struggle to build healthy habits because most wellness apps feel generic and completely disconnected from their academic lives.

Without a centralized tool that ties physical and mental well-being directly to their coursework, students lose motivation, leading to frustration and low app adoption.

Goals

The research led me with goals of creating an solution that will:

1. Simplify the process of managing fitness and wellness for SVSU students by offering an intuitive, student-centered platform tailored to individual goals, schedules, and ability levels.

2. Provide personalized workout and wellness recommendations with clear guidance, difficulty levels, progress tracking, and user feedback to help students stay motivated and informed.

3. Provide real-time guidance and in-app support to help users navigate workouts, understand exercises, track progress, and get instant answers throughout their wellness journey.

4.Create meaningful, career-building opportunities by enabling kinesiology students to gain hands-on experience, receive feedback, and build professional portfolios while supporting the broader student body’s wellness journey.

The research led me with goals of creating an solution that will:

1. Simplify the process of managing fitness and wellness for SVSU students by offering an intuitive, student-centered platform tailored to individual goals, schedules, and ability levels.

2. Provide personalized workout and wellness recommendations with clear guidance, difficulty levels, progress tracking, and user feedback to help students stay motivated and informed.

3. Provide real-time guidance and in-app support to help users navigate workouts, understand exercises, track progress, and get instant answers throughout their wellness journey.

New Approach: How Might I Create a Platform to Connect Career-driven Kinesiology Students and the rest of SVSU Student Body Seeking to Start or Maintain Their Wellness Journey?

Ideate

03 — IDeate

Information Architecture

With this approach in mind, I conducted a card sorting exercise with six users, two from each target market, to organize the app’s information architecture.

Through this exercise, users identified that features like “Goal” could fit into multiple categories, including “Home”, “Profile”, and “Rewards”, emphasizing the importance of a flexible, cross-functional design drawing from the insights gained in the card sort usability study, crafted a sitemap that effectively translates user needs into a organized layout.

To enhance clarity, I differentiated features that previously coexisted, such as settings and goals, ensuring that users can navigate with ease and confidence.

Crafting User Flows to Enhance Navigation

With the sitemap outlining a clear structure for the app, I focused on developing user flows that illustrated the key pathways users would take to access various features. I prioritized highlighting essential user flows, including onboarding, completing a workout, and creating a routine, to ensure a seamless experience for our users.

Transitioning to Ideation

With the user flows and sitemap established, I dove into the ideation phase. Sketches were used to map out key screens, such as the home, workouts, goals, and profile sections, ensuring a clear and user-friendly structure. These initial drawings helped identify potential issues early and served as a guide for creating the app’s wireframes and prototypes.

Test

04 — Test

Testing, Iterations, and Results

Usability testing showed that students struggled to build and complete workouts because the original experience was text-heavy, unclear, and required them to remember too much. Users often selected exercises for the wrong section, lost track of sets and progress, and hesitated or abandoned tasks.

I redesigned the routine-building and workout flows with clearer exercise cards, section labels, multi-select actions, visible progress, timers, and step-by-step guidance. These changes increased task success from 65% to 95%, reduced completion time from 5.2 to 2 minutes, and increased user preference from 2.5 to 5 out of 5.

Takeaways

05 — Lessons Learned

I grew to understand that complexity is often a structural problem, not a visual one; my growth as a designer came from prioritizing the architectural integrity of the IA first, using Card Sorting to resolve confusion and ensure logical, predictable navigation.
My philosophy shifted to “Clarity drives Confidence,” meaning I learned to prioritize low-friction experiences by strictly applying progressive disclosure to break down complex tasks (like the workout flow), which is critical for turning infrequent users into engaged, consistent users.
I realized the full strategic value of the “finish line” in a flow; my design growth showed me that completion screens must be actionable and personalized (like the Daily Checklist) to drive essential habit formation and retention, not just signal the end of a task.

Next Project: Ford Internship