Mirror
UX Case Study
Overview
Mirror is a mobile application that mitigates the harmful effects of social media. Mirror encourages self-reflection habits to foster a healthy, positive self-image.
Role
UX Designer, UI Designer
Duration
June - August 2021 | 10 weeks
Contributors
Bijou Kim
Celine Chong
Daniel Shim
Shelly Zhao
Background
Social Comparison Theory
Humans have an innate drive to evaluate their own opinions and abilities. Hence, people compare their own traits and abilities to others.
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Social media has become engrained into the daily lives of young adults. These platforms capture hundreds of photos, media, and lifestyles from people all over the world. Excessive social media consumption may be prone to toxic ideation from the presentation of unrealistic beauty standards, extravagant lifestyles, and the pressure to become picture-perfect.
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Objective
To create a product that may mitigate these negative effects on self-image, and encourage healthy social media consumption habits.
Problem Statement
How might young adults whose self-image is distorted by social media gain awareness and implement healthier consumption habits & self-reflection practices so that they can achieve a better understanding of its personal impact and construct a more positive self-image?
Research
Literature
Reviews
We explored experimental research papers, surveys, & articles on the subject of social media & its correlation with mental health. We focused on the effects of social media networking platforms on young teenagers and emerging millennials.
User
Research
We conducted four user interviews & released a survey to gain a better understanding of social media habits and experiences.
Market
Research
We conducted competitive market research & analysis of existing solutions such as Reflectly, Lifecycle, and Apple Screen-time and studied the features & effectiveness of their functions.
Affinity Mapping
We compiled our research takeaways from our research and organized them into three specific categories: social media consumption habits, preventative measures for negative impacts, and social media’s effects on self-image.
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Research Insights
By synthesizing our research, our team found five main insights.
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34.5% of users reported feeling a negative effect on their mental health from social media.
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Social media distorts the personal achievements of many users.
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Self image is an underlying mechanism for the relationship between social media use and mental health.
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It is important to become more intentional with social media use.
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Self reflection and mindfulness can be useful tools to have in hand with social media.
Solution Ideation Chart
We utilized this diagram as a tool to consolidate our solution features. The upper right quadrant represents feasible features that we identified to create a significant impact for the intended audience.
As our final solution stack rank, we decided on the following:
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A daily reflection journal for mindfulness
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A mood check-in feature to keep track of well-being
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A daily social media activity breakdown
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Weekly activity reports and records
Storyboard
This storyboard represents a user suffering from body-image and the consumption toxic beauty standards on social media. The user utilizes our product’s journaling feature to reflect on her emotions and social media activity tracking to limit her screen time. At the end of this growing process, the user has constructed a more positive view to their self-image, and has overcome the negative influences of social media.
User Persona
User Journey Map
The journey map visualizes Hanna's three stages of her interactions with Mirror-- self-discovery, self-improvement, and long-term usage.
Final Product
Landing & Goal Setting
Core Features
Weekly Reports
Retrospective
What went well?​
This UX project was definitely a challenge for everyone as it was a virtual group collaboration. Despite the circumstances, my team and I were able to effectively work together through good communication and understanding of everyone’s unique circumstances. We did a great job of organizing all of our research material, making decisions on priorities for designs, and meeting deadlines as a team. We were very proud of the work we accomplished and the final result we created!
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What would I do differently?​
If I were to change anything or do something differently, it would be to conduct more research on the psychology of social media addiction and apply that knowledge into our solution design. The topic of addiction is a whole different field of research that we did not have the time or capacity to dive into. If we were to research this topic, our features and design choices may have been influenced and presented differently.
What did I learn?
Through this project, I expanded many of skills including user research, interface design, and the overall flow of the user experience design process. Due to the small time frame of this project, we felt quite rushed when conducting our user testing and applying our design critiques. Going forward, I now know the importance of user testing/redesigning and to dedicate an abundant amount of my time towards this process.