Overview

Dei um Tempo (translated as "Take a break") is an app to help people take a break from habits harmful to their health, such as excessive consumption of alcohol and/or tobacco, guiding them through information and resources to deal with the problem, creating a transformation in their lives.

Role and responsibilities

Since Dei um Tempo is a brand new startup, I worked in a very lean team, composed of the CEO, a CTO, five developers, a graphic designer, and me, as the product designer. All the team worked full remote, cross time zones.

• Create design solutions for internal and external use, leading the project from the start through an end-to-end design process.

• Research, analyze data, and define features for the MVP app.

• Create user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final pixel-perfect deliverables.

• Work closely and collaboratively with the developers to create a scalable style guide.

• Test the solutions with users and propose iterations.

I joined when the project was already in progress, so I didn't participate in the very beginning of the process.

Understanding the product

The first step was to understand the methodology, which is a bit different from the current market. The idea is not to force an obligation when leaving the consumption of these substances, but to guide them through information and resources so that they could take a break from it, and recognize themselves as a new person without it, and choose to live without it, having the support with others on this journey, all through an app.

Currently, the company has practically no virtual competitors, since most are physical programs (such as AA meetings, for example) and the few virtual apps don't have a wide reach or features, but all of them have frustrated users looking for an option.

Defining the personas

Our target audience is people with alcohol or tobacco consumption considered to be at risk, moderate and probable dependence (according to the AUDIT or Fargeström test), who have access to technology (such as smartphones) and use it for information and/or leisure. 

In addition to them, we also had to consider the investors, since we often had to include features to meet the demands in order to receive the investment fund.

Deciding what to build first.

To start the project, we wrote on a board all the necessary features for the operation based on previous user interviews and also desired features for the business (both for the short and long term), and we defined the priority for each one, thinking about the work to create each feature and the impact it would bring, choosing what would be included in the MVP or not.

Ideation of the app.

With the definition of the project and also the brand guide finished, I started to design the visual for the products. Thinking about the target audience and the image we would like to achieve, I set up a mood board with images and reference of interfaces to align expectations, and then I conceived some visual options following the brand guides previously created, to maintain the consistency of the brand. 

After that, I worked closely and collaboratively to create a UI style guide with components that could be reused, to make it simple to transform into a Design System soon. 

Back to the initial scope

Due to the pressure of the owners and investors, we end up changing a lot of the flows, mostly to include more features in the MVP than previously planned, messing a bit with the roadmap, and putting more pressure on the development team.

Since we couldn't change the release date, some features weren't totally polished or with the complete review, causing some anxiety on the development team.

Testing with users

Beta test release for selected users, tests, and interviews.

The app was released on Google Play and Apple Store in early 2021, but only a select group of people had access to the invites, so we could test the features in production and validated the methodology with the users. During the beta test phase, we interviewed a few of the most active users in the internal social media and users who give up during this phase to understand the reason for the abandonment.

The interviews with the most active users were a very touching moment for the team, since they opened up their lives and problems to us, and we realized how deeply our work was impacting their lives. 

Fortunately, we didn't find any big new issues, although it became clear that due to the additional features, the app wasn't polished enough or working as it should be, so we decided to take a step back.