Zentered

A Responsive Design To Find Your Ideal Yoga Retreat

My Role: Research, Persona Mapping, Sitemapping, User/Task Flows. Sketching, Wireframing, Prototyping, User testing.

Project Timeline: 2 weeks/ 80 hours

Design Process

Background 

• Zentered is a startup, that likes to connect users who like to locate a yoga center or retreats and learn yoga.

• Their main goal is to connect with like-minded people who like to learn yoga courses. 

Problem  

Users would like to learn yoga but are not able to find the right location for yoga courses around the world. Users who also like to travel and learn the yoga course but are not sure about the destination

Secondary Research

Research Methodologies

Using these four research methods to understand and empathize with the user's needs, frustrations, and goals for finding a yoga center.

The statistics of yoga practioners accross the globe.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator)

Next, I did KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to gain insight into the people who like to travel and practice yoga. My goal was to better understand Users’ expectations, wants, needs, and pain points when finding a yoga retreat center.

Yoga Practitioners

There are 300 million yoga practitioners around the globe. Yoga statistics from 2020 reveal that millions of people around the globe practice yoga regularly. In addition to taking care of their health, people around the world also spend more than $80 billion every year on classes, equipment, accessories, and other yoga-related things. Practicing yoga, compared to other exercises like walking and gymming significantly improves the quality of life you lead as yoga is not an exercise. Patients are undergoing cancer treatment; chemotherapy can experience the change by practicing yoga as it reduces cancer symptoms like nausea and vomiting as well as mood swing and fatigue.

Yoga Retreats around the globe

There are thousands of yoga retreats around the globe. There are many magical, mindful yoga destinations from nearly every continent. A variety of retreats are offered year-round from world-renowned teachers and scholars including everything from yoga teacher training, Ayurveda, yoga therapy, physiology, psychology, and more. Many yoga practitioners like to travel around the globe and experience holistic yoga retreats and spas. 

Survey

The survey was posted among different Yoga groups on social media and conducted a survey on group crits and I got 30 Survey answers. These data helped me gain a big picture of what users were expected from travel to places and attending yoga retreats :

• 28% of the participants like to practice any type of yoga several times a week.

• 47% of the participants were comfortable practicing locally.

• 75% likes to travel and explore places and learn yoga

• 64% are willing to travel and learn yoga and continue practicing yoga at home.

• 37% find their Yoga classes through the internet and social media as well.

• 23% by word of mouth

• 50% of the participants like to learn yoga anywhere for a happy life and well-being.

• 50% of the participants like to travel and have a holistic experience to learn yoga courses with good accommodation, affordable price with a good instructor. 

Synthesis

User Interviews

Following research, I synthesized my research findings in order to better understand users and their problems. I gathered my information from my research, and I conducted user interviews with 8 participants to understand users’ goals and pain points.

Findings

In each interview,  I observed that the user is specific about regular yoga practice every day.

• Users who also like to travel and learn the yoga course but are not sure about destinations.

• Users like practicing yoga in very different ways as some of them are looking for authenticity and others for physical activity.

• Many of them would like to have a holistic yoga experience but are concerned about time-consuming planning and organizing their travel.

• Most of the users expressed that they prefer all the information in one place including, accommodation, price, flights, course duration, covid safety, style of yoga, etc. 

• Few are concerned about the course duration and the travel time. 

Design Decisions

• Making a responsive design is good for the users to find all the details to locate yoga centers across the globe.

• Design a simple and clear UI interface for the users to use the website with ease.

• Design with a detailed filter and preference options including, price, safe travel, destinations, a form of yoga, arrival date, duration of the course, skill level.

• Design a carousel image in the gallery for the users to have a better user experience. 

• Highlight top yoga instructors, yoga centers with ratings.

• Highlight local food, culture, restaurants, activities, outdoors, etc. 

• Thumbnail images of travel distance and the airport

Reasoning

Designing a responsive design with all the details in one place about traveling, yoga retreat centers and course durations helps users to organize their travel easily. 

• Designing a simple and clear UI design makes the website clutter-free. 

• As many of the users are concerned about finding all the details in one place, it is best to have detailed filter options and preferences for the users to locate the destinations and achieve their goals easily. 

• Designing a carousel image gallery helps users not to waste too much time browsing so many pages.

• Highlighting the yoga instructors panel helps users to find the right instructor from beginner to expert level. 

• Highlighting the nearby attractions helps users to have a good travel experience and makes them explore more. 

• The Thumbnail of travel distance and the airport details make users plan and organize their trip easily. 

Informational Architecture

Sitemap

Using Miro, I created a sitemap for The Zentered website. Starting with the navigation menu and working my way down, referring to my "must-haves" on my feature roadmap to ensure all the features are there.

Interaction Design

Wireframe

I began preparing to sketch out my wireframes. Guided by my sketches, I jumped back on the computer to make some responsive wireframes for the key pages of the website. At this stage, I was using a grid layout, thinking about typography, choosing an icon set (Material Icons), and overall UI design.

Branding Design

Next, I created a mood board on Pinterest that reflected on Zentered’s top features.

Moodboard

Logo Sketches

The Zenterd’s logo design process began with sketching, and then using Adobe Illustrator, I made vector logos of a select few and paired these with various wordmarks to see which combinations best fit the brand identity I was going for.

Logo Design

UI Kit

I created a UI kit, using Adobe XD brand to show the final logo design, typography, and color palette.

UI Design

With the branding design is defined, I applied these UI design choices, creating high-fidelity responsive UI designs.

Responsive UI Design

 Challenge/Behind The Scenes      

The biggest challenge in this phase of my project ‘Zentered’ was time. Conducting and analyzing research, working with potential users, and learning from the experts have taken nearly a week.  I spent days in yoga centers and waiting for users to reply to my interviews took a lot of time. My online survey results were not great as expected so I waited for my group crit meeting and got my survey done. I am glad my peers help me through this project

 Conclusion

• Planning ahead, and submitting before the timeline

• Post surveys more than 10 social media platforms to get the maximum number of answers 

• Sketching wireframes before making a sitemap, makes me easier to see visually what goes right into the page.